Irish Times critics review Composers' Choice at the National Concert Hall, Dublin and a performance by Aslan at the The Ambassador
Composers' Choice at the NCH, Dublin
The five composers in the National Concert Hall's Composers' Choice series didn't between them opt to include a single original work that was more than one hundred years old. And, as in previous years, Irish composers' interest in hearing each others' work seemed to be very slight.
Only Siobhán Cleary complimented a colleague, by including Gerald Barry's quirky and decidedly unmartial Six Marches for string quartet among her choices.
Barry, who turned 50 last year, was the composer who opened the series, with an engaging pre-concert conversational joust with David Byers. Byers showed himself adept at keeping track of a composer who enjoys the circuitous routings of side-roads, and he managed to reap some harvest there, before steering him back to the original path.
The practicalities of composers as programmers involves a range of shortcuts. The illusion for the public is that the composer has engaged in an entirely free choice of music, "focusing on his or her own unique works and influences", as NCH director, Judith Woodworth puts it.
Stravinsky's arrangement of La Marseillaise, Barry informed Byers, was actually in the programme as a choice of the performers, the aptly-named Composers Ensemble. George Crumb's Eleven Echoes of Autumn 1965 made it into Ian Wilson's programme, because it was listed as a repertoire piece for his chosen ensemble, Psappha, and he didn't want them to have to learn too many new pieces.
As it turned out, changes in ensemble membership meant that only one musician in the group had actually played the piece before.
Barry was, in fact, the only composer who reached back beyond 1900, for waltzes by Franz Lehár and Johann Strauss that were heard in arrangements by John Woolrich and Arnold Schoenberg. Barry's sweet musical tooth is touched by memories of childhood in Co Clare. The swirl and energy of remembered waltzes and marches are among the things that animate his own compositions. Like Ives, whose Fourth Violin Sonata was among his choices, the Clareman engages in unpredictable and often darkly-hued doings with his raw material.
The sparely linear Ø (1979) was originally conceived for two pianos playing identical parts, a ploy that's devilishly demanding for the performers, given the music's rhythmic patterning. Here, Barry offered a version for piano quartet, in which the necessary transitions of colour and timbre have been calculated with highest cunning. In the Asylum (2000) for piano trio creates an impression, sometimes in spider-light lines, of musical ideas that have been refracted again and again. But the highlight of the evening was the Octet (1995) which shifted from distorted Bartókian chasing games, to a crazy, clustery piano solo to out-do the master and inventor of clusters, Henry Cowell, and then a timid, bird-like pizzicato, with matching, pecking wind. The journeying was extreme, but worth every moment.
Siobhán Cleary (born 1970), cites Barry (from whom she has taken lessons) as a major influence, and is clearly keen to follow the live-in-the-moment aspect of his work. She doesn't quite have Barry's sense of timing or proportion, but her Andalusian Dog (1997) for solo violin, and specially-commissioned Carrowkeel (2003) for string quartet, show an engaging talent for homing in on strong ideas, strongly expressed. It's "d" Jim, but not as we know it (2001), for string trio and live electronics, seems, however, a miscalculation that's overly dependent on the clichés of computer processing.
Cleary was well served by her players - Darragh Morgan, Chris George, Bridget Carey and Sophie Harris - whose performance of Franco Donatoni's La Souris sans Sourire, a sort of unevenly adjusted twittering machine for string quartet, was one of the highlights of the series.
The biggest attendance in the John Field Room came for the concert by Whispering Gallery, a loose collective whose members traverse the boundaries between composition, rock music and improvisation with ease.
The two most established names here were those of Judith Ring (born 1976), whose new Fusion for double bass and electronics was strongest in its electronic element, and Jürgen Simpson (born 1975), whose Piano Piece I (2001) is grittily arresting.
The best of the other works (which included a piano improvisation by Paul Smyth) had an air of healthy experimentalism.
I missed the pre-concert talk by Elaine Agnew (born 1967), and felt slightly at a loss listening to her programme. Her chosen works were by Stravinsky, Judith Weir, Szymanowski and Lutoslawski, pieces she seems to have chosen for their gestural confidence and controlled indulgence as well as personal associations. Her own works, however, don't seem to deliver on the clarity of idea that lies behind their gestation. Her most successful moments in this concert seemed to me to be the Szymanowskian melodic insinuations and Barry-ish giddiness of the Prologue and Epilogue (2001) for violin and piano.
Ian Wilson (born 1964) has shed a number of skins in his time, and the two parts of his ongoing Unterwelt series, Eat, Sleep, Empire and the specially-commissioned Involute (both 2002), suggest that he may be undergoing the process again. His colourful and atmospheric Timelessly this (1992) has a focused confidence that's not as clear in the newer pieces. Psappha made the most of its gestural clarity, and sounded altogether more comfortable in the effects of George Crumb's Eleven Echoes of Autumn 1965 than in the delicate rarefaction of Morton Feldman's Why Patterns?
Michael Dervan
Aslan at the The Ambassador, Dublin
There's a scene in Children of a Lesser God where William Hurt tries to convey the music of Mozart to his deaf lover through movement. He can't, and gives up frustrated. Christy Dignam would never quit so easily.
Admittedly, Dignam's representational task isn't especially complicated. Here's the barefoot frontman during Crazy World: "How [shrugs shoulders\] can I [indicates self\] protect [hugging gesture\] you [indicates us\] in this crazy [loops finger around temple\] world [signifies huge orb, uses fingers to suggest presence of every soul therein?\]" Truly, he could play charades for Ireland.
But his performative zeal comes soon after a minor plane crash, pneumonia and surgery. Similarly, the rest of the group maintain an alarming energy, with keys player, guitarist and harmonica brayer Billy McGuiness urging full audience participation. It's a shame then, being accustomed to sold-out stretches, that he sees so many balcony seats empty.
Struggling against a waning atmosphere, this first gig feels more like a dress rehearsal than opening night of a four-night run, which isn't helped by characterless songs that lyrically invoke The Beatles, David Bowie and REM, but more often simply emulate Oasis's hoary pub-rock. Stones' cover Angie goes down well, while a stunningly committed audience harmony through This Is signals the fealty of attendant fans. But, as Aslan must have wondered, where were the rest of them?
Peter Crawley
