Reviewed: Belcea Quartetand Plaid

Belcea Quartet

Castletown House,

Co Kildare

Schubert - String Quartet in A minor D804. Beethoven - String Quartet in C# minor Op 131

The Music in Great Irish Houses festival opened on Friday in the new Curtis Auditorium of the Cork School of Music. The following day, the same performers and programme were in the festival's more traditional surroundings of Castletown House.

The members of the British-based Belcea Quartet have been working together for around 14 years, and have accumulated an impressive list of recordings and prizes, plus appearances at many of the world's leading venues. From the opening of Schubert's Quartet in A minor D804, it was clear why they have made such a widespread impact. Their playing is so characterful that, whether or not one agrees with everything they do seems far less important than acknowledging a completeness that rests on a marriage between deep engagement with the music, and powerfully communicative delivery.

These musicians seem less concerned with polished unanimity than with integrated, intelligent discourse between individuals.

Throughout the concert, that emphasis created music-making that was always vivid, colourful and compelling. However, in the Schubert, I sometimes wished that the music's inherent dramatic and stylistic subtleties could speak for themselves. For example, the Menuetto is a stylised dance; but does that stylisation need to be emphasised by pronounced rubato and highly pointed phrasing? The Belceas did justice to the complexity and expressive scope of Beethoven's Quartet in C sharp minor, Op 131 - a piece that never loses its capacity to astonish. With zeal and subtlety, the players shaped each idea and the extraordinarily elaborate textures. Their range of colour and pacing of events (one of the work's greatest challenges) were persuasive. And although the desire for intensity sometimes pressed tone and intonation towards the edge of practicality - especially in the last movement - this was a compelling performance. - MARTIN ADAMS

Plaid

Crawdaddy, Dublin

The old cliche about live electronica shows consisting of no more than one or two anonymous blokes hiding behind keyboards is a thing of the past - now, the anonymous blokes hide behind laptops instead. There's limited scope for showmanship when tapping away at a Macbook - one can only be so energetic while playing with software, after all - so the biggest challenge for most electronica acts when performing is giving the crowd something to look at.

The opening act, Sunken Foal, illustrated the difficulty of the "two men behind a pair of laptops" conundrum, as they failed to fully engage the crowd with a set that was rather too discordant in a self-satisfied kind of way. As a warm-up, it served only to heighten the desire to see the arrival of Andy Turner and Ed Handley, Plaid's pair of anonymous blokes. It was disappointing, however, that Plaid's performance featured none of the visuals for which they are renowned, and which have become so much a part of the live electronica experience. Happily, they managed to let the music do the entertaining, serving up a vibrant, more conventionally dancey sound than the intelligent, complex melodies that fill out their albums.

Turner and Handley have been making music together for 20 years, and, since the mid-1990s, when they split from Black Dog to become Plaid, they have consistently been one of the most respected and successful electronica acts around. Along with Aphex Twin and Autechre, Plaid have been standard bearers at Warp Records, but, like those acts, recent releases have hinted at a loss of momentum and focus. Double Figure from 2001 is still their creative highpoint, but their most recent album proper, Spokes, was released all the way back in 2003, and received a lukewarm critical reception. But if this show was a hint of the direction their new album Scintilli, due out this summer, is going to take, then it appears Plaid might have finally reclaimed their relevance. - DAVIN O'DWYER