Irish Times reviewers out and about in Belfast and Dublin.
BBC Music Live
Various venues, Belfast
It may be a slight exaggeration to say that for the 11 days between last Friday and the May bank holiday Belfast is the music capital of the world, as the BBC Music Live website suggests, but this festival, part of a series that features the BBC regions in turn, does include four high-profile free classical concerts as well as a number of non-classical events that will be broadcast by BBC radio.
The opening concert, given by the Ulster Orchestra under Thierry Fischer, brought a timely reminder of the impact of live music. Janácek's Sinfonietta is something of a rarity here, but with its nine trumpets, two bass trumpets and two tenor tubas (all in addition to the normal orchestral complement) it calls out to be experienced in the flesh. The Waterfront Hall acoustics are bright rather than warm, but the extra brass was not overbearing, and one was struck most by the freshness and clarity of the orchestral writing.
Ravel's Bolero, anything but a rarity, benefits to surprising extent from being heard live. On record its repetitions can be unappealing, but in concert the composer's ingenious orchestration comes to life. Both works received clear-cut, energetic performances.
Balance can be tricky in Strauss's Four Last Songs, and Janice Watson's clear, light soprano was sometimes covered by the strings. The hall's acoustics being what they are, however, I can report only on what I heard from Block E, and listeners in other blocks, or in other parts of Block E, which is not a large block, may well have heard something quite different. There were some nicely turned phrases, but more projection of the words may have helped to differentiate the songs.
The most rewarding item was Steven Isserlis's playing of the Haydn D major Cello Concerto. Here was that rare thing, truly creative playing, in which a wealth of subtle expression from the soloist was supported by a suitably stylish accompaniment. Isserlis plays as if communing with himself, exploring a world of the private imagination, but his delicate half-tones carried surprisingly well.
Impressive as the sound of 14 trumpets in the Waterfront was, the sound of two dozen BBC singers in the more intimate surroundings of St George's Church was remarkably powerful, as well as admirably clear; in a brief talk with the presenter, the singer Catherine Bott, guest conductor Peter Phillips commented that in rehearsal he hadn't had to mention the word vibrato.
Motets by Tallis (Loquebantur Variis Linguis, Suscipe Quaeso), Byrd (Quomodo Cantabimus and Tristitia Et Anxietas) and Lassus (Te Spectant Reginalde Poli and Tui Sunt Caeli) featured in a programme concentrating on Latin church music written during the reign of Elizabeth I. Lassus, in the safety of continental Europe, could celebrate the return of Cardinal Pole under Mary I without misgivings, but
Byrd's Tristitia reflects the "sadness and anxiety" of English Catholics in the later years of Elizabeth's reign. Lassus's christening motet Tui Sunt Caeli made a festive close.
Dermot Gault
John Martyn
Vicar Street, Dublin
Looking like a cross between Orson Welles's Citizen Kane and the private detective Frank Cannon, John Martyn lumbered on stage unrecognisable. The years have taken their toll: so much so that these days Martyn uses a staff to support his effortful walking.
Cutting an almost biblical sight on stage, he was greeted with a fittingly fervent reception from a crowd that evidently adored this Scottish maverick, for all his inaudible vignettes and inevitable foibles.
The oddity of the experience was tangible. On the one hand, here was an artist who has definitely seen better days; on the other, once he let the air through those trademark smoked vocals it could so easily have been 1974 all over again. Strange how a larynx can resist the ravages of time.
With a new album, On The Cobbles, just hitting the decks, Martyn has no shortage of material to draw from. Still effortlessly straddling blues, rock and the funkiest soul this side of Mavis Staples, he glories in the delicious hammock of keyboards, bass, drums and electric guitar that fuels everything from the classic May You Never to the plaintive Solid Air and Never Let Me Go.
It's the sheer scale of the repertoire that stills the zealous crowd, though: not satisfied to roll out the old favourites, Martyn ambles through his immense back catalogue, cherry-picking his current favourites, sporadically acquiescing to the crowd's demands, secure in the knowledge that his band will follow his picaresque wanderings with barely a glance at the music sheet.
Yes, he treated us to a divine rendering of May You Never, but he staunchly resisted all pleadings to air his trademark Sweet Little Mystery. And who can blame him? This is a man who sings love songs like no other, whose back catalogue groans with tales of love lost, unrequited and squandered. He may not wield his electric guitar with the venom of yesteryear, but close your eyes and Martyn hurtles you back to a time when music had space and time to breathe.
Siobhán Long
The Elements
The Ark, Dublin
A live concert for children in which the musicians play only percussion instruments seemed at first a somewhat unattractive offering, yet The Elements, composed by David Boyd and Robbie Harris and performed by Boyd, Harris, Johnny Kalsi and Ray Fean, was one of the most engaging and uplifting performances I have ever attended.
These highly talented and widely accomplished percussionists (Fean and Harris have toured with Riverdance, Kalsi has worked with Peter Gabriel and Avril Lavigne and Boyd devised and presented The Big Little Music Show) made their instruments sing, shout and roar, creating a range of sound that you would never expect from percussion instruments. Using only their voices, facial expressions and body movements to complement the sounds from their huge selection of drums, cymbals, shakers, bells and many Latin American percussion instruments, they brought the young audience on a musical trip around the world, stopping off at exotic locations along the way.
Right from the introductory piece in which Harris placed the microphone close to his chest, so we could hear his heart beat, the audience was captured.
In the hour-long performance we were transported to exotic bazaars, flamboyant fiestas, mystical forests and scintillating seashores.
Flashes of light picked up on panels of abstract drawings above the stage became bolts of lightening as the drums roared and cymbals crashed out the sounds of thunder. Yet there were quiet moments, too, the most striking of which was when the four performers sat on the stage floor and accompanied David Boyd playing the hang, a ceramic pot that created sounds like soft piano notes.
Throughout this celebration of percussion Boyd, Harris, Kalsi and Fean gave a seamless performance, leaving space for solo pieces and then returning fluidly to the ensemble. The only disappointment of the show was that the musicians didn't introduce the audience to their amazing gathering of instruments.
After the performance all the children were given drum plates to tap with sticks. Guided by Boyd, adults and children alike joined in an improvised piece that demonstrated just how much we had assimilated from the previous hour's listening.
Sylvia Thompson
Eric Clapton
Point, Dublin
He's been playing the praises of old blues legends for so long that Eric Clapton qualifies as one himself. The 59-year-old's latest album, Me & Mr Johnson, is a tribute to original bluesman Robert Johnson, but there were many here for whom Slowhand is the ultimate guitar hero.
The night belonged to music fans who appreciate a well-turned blues lick, a fluid guitar solo and a classic hit they can sing along to. Clapton's band included the one and only Billy Preston on Hammond organ and the (relatively) young Texan blues guitarist Doyle Bramhall II; all were here to assist in this bluesology masterclass, delivered by the man who some still believe possesses godlike guitar powers.
Clapton opened with his breezy 1970 tune Let It Rain and, tempting fate, continued with a Dylan composition, Walk Out In The Rain, from Clapton's 1978 album Backless. Luckily, the April evening air remained resolutely mild. When he confessed to the killing of Sheriff John Brown, to a choppy reggae shuffle, it was hard to believe such a thing of this mild-mannered, bespectacled gent, but when he flexed his fingers and fired off a killer guitar solo at point-blank range even his virtuoso sidekick grinned at such deadly accuracy. He may be nearly 60, but the Clapton Kid is still effortlessly quick on the draw.
Clapton kept his sights firmly on past glories, picking off the hits and the classic tracks. After a quick history lesson via Robert Johnson's Milkcow's Calf Blues, When You've Got A Good Friend and They're Red Hot, Clapton aimed for more recent history with Have You Ever Loved A Woman, Got To Get Better In A Little While and a climactic version of Cream's Badge. By that stage we were putty in his hands for Wonderful Tonight, and though Layla exposed Clapton's vocal weakness and Cocaine's magic has long ago worn off, an encore of Sunshine Of Your Love, featuring Robert Randolph on pedal steel, kept rainy reality at bay. Mojo workin' just fine, E C.
Kevin Courtney
Faust, Boffard
Mullingar Arts Centre
Bach - Sonata in C minor BWV1017. Beethoven - Sonata in G Op 96.
Elaine Agnew - Statues. Strauss - Sonata in E flat Op 18
The violinist Isabelle Faust and the pianist Florent Boffard, playing modern instruments, demonstrated period instruments' sensitivities in their performance of Bach's C minor Sonata for Violin and Keyboard on Sunday night.
Faust's playing was crisp and unfussy, with searing long notes and only light vibrato in the soulful slow movements and plenty of airy rhythmic life in the fast ones. Boffard offered a more mixed style, preferring what you might call period articulation, with scant pedal in quick tempos while at slower speeds exploiting the piano's sustaining capacity and dynamic range.
With such a stylistic divergence between the players, the aesthetic was a doubly hybrid one, but it worked, such was the pair's musical judgment. This held true even in their unshowy encore, the adagio from the Sonata in E. Boffard gave an almost 19th-century expressive weighting to its sad, slow, repeating chords. Purists might have flipped, but the result was gorgeous.
In Beethoven's Sonata in G - his last, dating from 1812 - it is the composer who insists on bringing together disparate elements. The first movement contains competing moods, the one summery and indolent, evoked by the flutter of a gentle trill, the other alert and purposeful. Faust and Boffard matched Beethoven's seamless combining via deep insight and mutual anticipation.
Their reading of Statues by the Irish composer Elaine Agnew (b 1967) was committed and persuasive. After a halting, whispering start the second half is dominated by helter-skelter unison scale passages reminiscent of Gerald Barry.
To this point the players exercised restraint in the low-ceilinged space and hard acoustic of the gallery. But Strauss's Sonata, their last item, was sometimes simply too big for the room. Still, this only impinged slightly on the pleasure of hearing them meet the 23-year-old Strauss's full-blown, Schumannesque romanticism head on.
Music Network tour continues in Dublin tonight and Newbridge, Co Kildare, tomorrow
Michael Dungan
