John Cale. . . Vicar Street, Dublin: For more than 40 years John Cale has enjoyed no small level of notoriety, fame and critical plaudits for his work with Velvet Underground and his solo career.
The largely positive feedback is mostly justified: his fusing of pop and rock with notions of the avant-garde has broken ground, his lyrics of distance and disenfranchisement a boon to victims of conveyor-belt pap. "Amazing" was one word this reviewer heard to describe his typically cantankerous performance, but a cut above average might have sufficed.
Touring with a band of eager, disciplined younger musicians, the sixtysomething seems to have been taking tips from them. Yet they in turn seemed somewhat in awe of the Welsh master of the strange, as they chopped and changed rhythms with as much precision as they could muster.
They performed new songs - material from Cale's recent Five Tracks EP and forthcoming solo album - which, though never less than interesting, were hardly riveting. There are only so many self-conscious splintered time changes you can take before your attention drifts.
Cale's acute failure to blend his music's occasional obtuseness and dissonance with intriguing melody lines was all the more highlighted by his choice of cover songs: Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs was fabulous, sinuous strings underpinning a macabre sadomasochistic lyric; just what the doctor of death ordered - as was his subtle and emotional investment in Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. His final song was Heartbreak Hotel (another cover, and a virtual signature tune), sadly hampered by technical problems. By then, however, whatever combined spell Venus In Furs, Hallelujah and a few others had cast had been well and truly broken.
Visibly annoyed by the breakdown of technology, Cale waved goodnight in the manner of a grumpy grandad. He'll live to fight another day, to make up for a frustrating, oddly compelling gig, and no doubt we'll see him play a blinder. This gig, though, was decidedly off the boil.
Tony Clayton-Lea
Barbara Bonney
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Frauenliebe Und Leben - Schumann. Er Ist's, Die Bekehrte, Verschwiegene Liebe, Nimmersatte Liebe, Der Knabe Und Das Immlein - Wolf. Der Fischerknabe, Freudvoll und Leidvoll, Im Rhein Im Schönen Strome, Der Du Von Dem Himmel Bist - Lizst. Im Chambre Separée - Heuberger. Du Nur Bist Das Glück Meines Lebens - Dostal. Ich Bin Die Christel Von Der Post - Zeller. Einer Wird Kommen, Meine Lippen, Sie Küssen So Heiss - Lehár.
Not for a second was Barbara Bonney's status in doubt during her recital at the National Concert Hall. It was not just her superlative, apparently effortless technique and always-beautiful soprano tone. This was musicianship brimming with purposeful finesse.
It was disappointing that the opening item, Schumann's Frauenliebe Und Leben, did not make the impact it can. Whatever the reason, the minute vocal inflections of which this singer is so capable did not engage with the details of text and music as convincingly as in the rest of the concert.
The programme included five songs by Wolf and four by Liszt.
Standing somewhere between Schumann and Wolf in vocal style, the Liszt included some remarkable, unjustly neglected music. Bonney's gradual revelation of narration, poetic feeling and the most subtle musical expression was epitomised in Wolf's setting of Goethe's Die Bekehrte. With her variety of tone and perfect timing, she seemed able to do anything and everything that might be necessary to capture the detail and reach of this sinister yet beguiling poetry and music.
Malcolm Martineau was the epitome of the pianist who could accommodate himself to the smallest detail of a singer's nuances. He was consistently impressive and consistently too well mannered, as if his sole role was to accommodate the singer. All too quickly the lack of tension between pianist and singer became a limitation that in some songs was serious.
The main programme ended with five arias from Viennese operettas. In them we could see why Bonney is a star of opera as well as the concert stage. Her understated elegance and economy of expression were a perfect match. She is a star act, whose musical values were clearly stated in her choice of encores: simple, profound songs by Schumann and Mozart.
Martin Adams
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Ulster Airs: The Yell Heifer and Sporting Kate - Norman Hay. Suite for Strings, Song Cycle: The County Mayo, Ulster Airs: The Boyne Water, Rosa Breathnac, Bellaghy Fair - Joan Trimble. Concerto for Piano and Strings - Howard Ferguson. Irish Rhapsody No 1 - Stanford.
Enniskillen-born Joan Trimble (1915-2000) was active for many years as a composer, as a newspaper proprietor and as part of a piano-duet partnership with her sister Valerie: I remember them playing the Mozart Double Concerto in the Ulster Hall in November 1968.
Charm and delicacy characterise her often folk-influenced original compositions, of which we heard the 1953 Suite for Strings and the 1949 cycle The County Mayo for baritone (Joe Corbett) and two pianos (Una Hunt and Roy Holmes, who also gave us some of Trimble's shorter two-piano pieces). The writing is fluent and graceful, and she always adds a dash of harmonic spice just when everything seems about to become too mellifluous.
There is a darker, heavier feel, an added touch of nostalgia, to Howard Ferguson's 1951 Concerto for Piano and Strings, neglected perhaps because Ferguson is uninterested in display by the soloist (the excellent Una Hunt again) for its own sake.
In the 1930s BBC Northern Ireland commissioned a large number of arrangements of traditional melodies from mainly Northern Ireland composers, including Trimble and Norman Hay, for its Ulster Airs scheme.
This sort of arrangement is unfashionable now, but Trimble makes an affecting piece out of Rosa Breathnac, which brings relief from the side drum favoured in so many of these orchestrations. Stanford's Rhapsody, also folksong-based, was like an oil painting after an evening of watercolours: meaty stuff but overblown.
It was all well played by the Ulster Orchestra under John Lubbock.
Dermot Gault
L'Empordà Chamber Orchestra
Helix, Dublin
The Toreador's Prayer, Symphonic Rhapsody - Turina. Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra - Albert Carbonell. Sea Sights - Toldrá.
This concert was a reminder that our view of 20th-century Spanish music is restricted.
Some composers thought differently from those who are best-known outside Spain - those who, like Falla and Rodrigo, used the materials and idioms of folk song and dance to create a national art music.
In Catalonia, where this orchestra is based, and in other parts of Spain, there were composers who worked closer to the mainstreams of European practice.
Like Frank Bridge in England, and in Ireland Freddie May and Brian Boydell, they seem to have found a certain liberation in the broad, European route.
Turina's The Toreador's Prayer (1925) is a vivid evocation that draws on the language of late romanticism and impressionism. His Symphonic
Rhapsody (1931) for piano and strings stands up with similar, better-known works by Dohnányi and Gershwin.
By any standards, Sea Sights (1921) by the Catalan Eduard Toldrá is remarkable for its command of string colours.
The piano soloist was Daniel Ligorio, an impressive young musician whose priorities lie with clarity of expression and with rhythmic life.
He also did well in the new Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra by Albert Carbonell. There is a bracing vigour in this young Catalan's
readiness to draw on whatever takes his fancy, and his command of compositional technique is enviable.
This is a good orchestra; it makes a big sound for just 13 strings and can draw on a remarkable range of colour and volume.
Under the direction of their conductor Carles Coll, they handled the most elaborate rhythms with snappy precision, though they also can produce a nicely rounded style of attack. Their infectious commitment made it hard to imagine performances more persuasive than these.
Martin Adams
