Irish Times writers review the Ulster Orchestra - Ilan Volkov at the Ulster Hall and Har Mar Superstar at Whelan's in Dublin.
Ulster Orchestra – Ilan Volkov
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Dermot Gault
Tchaikovsky – Overture "Le Voyevode" Op 3.
Khachaturian – Violin Concerto.
Stravinsky – Divertimento.
Khachaturian – Masquerade Suite.
"At 3 a.m. I was walking the floor and listening to Khachaturian working in a tractor factory. He
called it a violin concerto. I called it a loose fan belt and to hell with it."
This unexpected piece of music criticism from Raymond Chandler is wide of the mark. Khachaturian's 1940 Violin
Concerto has its bright and busy passages, the solo part bristling with semi-quavers and kick-dancing interjections from the orchestral brass, but it also has a charm more typical of the 19th century than the Soviet era.
The presiding influence is the folk music of the composer's ancestral homeland of Armenia, although the first movement's second theme could almost have been written by Bax in one of his Celtic Twilight moods.
The young Kazakh violinist Marat Bisengaliev played with a bright clear tone which tended to become pinched in the upper register but which projected every note of the taxing solo writing clearly.
Given the fondness of Belfast concert promoters (and, presumably, audiences) for Russian music, it is surprising that Stravinsky's
Divertimento, a suite from his 1928 ballet The Fairy's Kiss, isn't heard more often.
Based on little-known music by Tchaikovsky, it successfully marries Stravinsky's incisive clarity to Tchaikovsky's romantic warmth.
Another Tchaikovsky rarity, heard this time in its original state, was the overture to his first
opera, The Voyevode. Already characteristic of its composer without being really representative of his genius, it was clearly played by the Ulster Orchestra under Ilan Volkov, the young conductor of the BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra.
Har Mar Superstar
Whelan's, Dublin
John Lane
On tour to plug his major label debut, You Can Feel Me, Har Mar Superstar (or Sean Tillmann, as
he's known to his mother) is an apparent novelty act, but as he gets into his stride, it's quickly clear that the comic facade is just a gimmick to get our full attention.
For the visual among you, Har Mar's show involves him singing and breakdancing along to a boombox as he slowly relieves himself of his Lycra outfit and a flowing red cape until all that's left is a pair of very sweaty
Y-fronts.
But if pop music were experienced only via the ears, and not also the eyes, the libido and the kitsch radar, Har Mar wouldn't need his cloak of irony.
On the outside is a freak (a cross between Aidan Walsh and a very white and lewd James Brown) gently mocking the medium. On the inside – where his music comes from – is a songwriter and vocalist whose impeccable ear for a catchy hook is matched by a cast-iron graspof the musical path he's resurfacing.
Taking his cues from 1970s Motown, disco funk and electro, blended with the freshest of hiphopbeats, Har Mar sings like Michael Jackson down an octave, or Barry White upthree, and his songs rival the best from this era or any other.
Ironic detachment has become so pervasive that it has become the only prism through which a great deal of modern pop music can be judged.
It's a short-cut to cool for those less beautiful or talented than the cover stars, a way of acknowledging one's shortcomings and even making a virtue of them. Thus, a slightly podgy, balding singer with a pencil moustache
and a mullet can present himself as the sexiest man alive and not be seen as some fantasist Pop Idol reject. But don't be fooled by the act. Har Mar's no idiot and no dabbler. A cover of Steve Wonder's classic Sir Duke proves Har Mar
Superstar has got soul, as well as more wit and pop smarts than just about all of his "earnest" contemporaries.
You can take or leave the "I'm so uncool it has to be cool", but when Mar gets funky and screams, Hey, I'm awesome, he's not being ironic.
