Irish Times critics review a performance from the NSO under the baton of William Eddins; a gig with Dexys Midnight Runners at Vicar Street and the TG4 Traditional Music Awards in Limerick
Demidenko, NSO/Eddins at the NCH, Dublin
Ravel - Pavane pour une infante défunte.
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 2.
Prokofiev - Symphony No 4 Op 112
The principal guest conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, William Eddins, has been the man who in recent years has most consistently made the orchestra sound at its best. There's a natural fluidity in his music-making and he brings to the NSO's playing a degree of internal clarity, a responsiveness to dynamic extremes and an alertness to issues of colour and sonority that set him apart.
It is with this background in mind that the performance of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte last Friday came as such an unpleasant shock. The nervous-sounding and unsteady horn solo at the start punctured the atmosphere of this most atmospherically reserved evocation of a courtly Spanish past; and, although the string playing was altogether more polished, the performance never quite recovered.
The major orchestral undertaking of the evening, Prokofiev's rarely-heard Fourth Symphony, was written in 1929 (borrowing material from the unsuccessful ballet, The Prodigal Son) and revised, due to its own lack of success and the composer's continuing affection for it, in 1947.
Prokofiev was too keenly aware of the quality of the material he had used not to want to give it a second chance. But even the revision is rarely symphonic in feel, and it lacks the range of original touches that are to be found in the Second and Third Symphonies.
The Fourth is closer than either to the later, more popular Prokofiev; and, paradoxically, that may be part of its current undoing. Too often it reminds one of specific orchestral effects, melodic turns or harmonic shifts that the composer used to better effect elsewhere. Moment by moment, however, it always sounds well and, to the delight of Friday's audience, Eddins nursed and cajoled the piece, like an expert driver at the wheel of a car that looks a million dollars but needs a special handler if it's not to drive like a jalopy.
Nikolai Demidenko offered an account of Rachmaninov's Second Concerto which took the music out of the world of gushing emotionality and technical bluster which it is so often forced to inhabit. He kept his listeners on the edge of their seats, with an approach that always sounded fresh.
The emotional tenor was often more wistful than teary, yet never lacking in depth of expression, and his rock-solid technical control enabled him to project melodic lines without forcing, while still shining beams of illumination on the always fascinating patterns of Rachmaninov's accompanimental figuration.
Eddins and his players responded to the soloist on his own terms, making for a performance that was both refined and enthralling.
Michael Dervan
Dexys Midnight Runners at Vicar Street, Dublin
Two things you will know about Dexys Midnight Runners: they are responsible for the wedding-band staple Come on Eileen and, in frontman Kevin Rowland, possess a songwriter whose hold on reality has at times been tenuous.
What you may not realise is that, in their 1980s pomp, Dexys could claim to be the complete pop group: ground-breaking, fiercely intelligent, wildly adored.
Witnessing this comeback concert felt like being let in on a jealously-guarded secret then as Dexys delivered a near flawless set, pouring ridicule on their popular portrayal as a novelty act decades past its expiration date.
It was also apparent that Rowland isn't nearly as unhinged as his disastrous late 1990s stint as a cross-dressing cabaret singer suggested. Eerily ageless in pinstripes, shades and beret, he received the audience's blokey hero-worship with easy grace. If Rowland found the limelight unbearable - as he is rumoured to have during Dexys' 1986 implosion - it certainly didn't show.
Nor were the unresolved tensions that often plague reunion tours in evidence. With still youthful bass player Pete Williams promoted to co-vocalist, Dexys clicked like a group enjoying their first rush of fame, clearly as delighted, and astonished, to be here as devotees were to have them.
And, to their credit, there was little calculating nostalgia. Drawing heavily from their ill-fated final album, Don't Stand Me Down, the nine-piece tiptoed around Dexys' chart-conquering heyday. Only a perky Geno and gorgeously overwrought Come on Eileen - it seemed to go on for hours - pandered to casual admirers. More rewarding by far was a string-soaked Let's Make This Precious and a stirring This Is What She's Like - so close to perfection that, recession and Cold War notwithstanding, you found yourself wishing the 1980s had never ended.
Finally, a comeback tour that surpassed expectations.
Ed Power
TG4 Traditional Music Awards at UL Concert Hall
Laurels ceremonies (especially those which are televised) can be a boon for the recipients and purgatory for the punters who sit through endless revisions and rejigs. Saturday night's ceremony was in the high-risk category for purgatorial accolades as it slipped into its third hour of filming, but a combination of superb musicianship and a tsunami of goodwill towards this year's Hall of Fame recipient, Johnny O'Leary, rerouted the night towards nirvana just when it was in danger of veering towards Lough Derg.
Now in its sixth year, and firmly anchored as one of the traditional music fraternity's biggest nights out, the TG4 Awards relocated to the University of Limerick from its home venue of the Cork Opera House with not a sign of homesickness and a certain tincture of adrenaline gushing through its veins.
If eclecticism was its quarry, then this year's event scored high: Donegal fiddler Ciarán Ó Maonaigh, this year's Young Traditional Musician of the Year, jousted effortlessly with his considerably more travelled aunt, Mairead Ní Mhaonaigh, and her compadres in Altan; and yet he still commanded a fiercely independent presence alongside his accompanist (and father), Gearóid, on guitar. Johnny Doran's somnolent Donegal style was everywhere to be heard and felt in Ciarán's unhurried playing, proof of the mantle being passed yet further on across the generations - with its spirit indisputably intact.
With a guest list that swung from the ebullient madness of 4 Men and a Dog to Mel Mercier, a musician and academic who has schooled and cajoled our feeling for percussion to new planes previously only dreamt of by dour bodhrán masochists, and Abbeyfeale siblings Louise and Michelle Mulcahy on flute and harp, there was enough excuse for revelry in the guest list alone, not to mention the whooping and hollering that accompanied the arrival of Loughrea composer Vincent Broderick, singer, song-collector and historian Frank Harte, and the ever-modest Traditional Musician of the Year, Roscommon-resident and London-born John Carty.
This was a night for local accents and regional styles to rule supreme.
Sliabh Luachra, with her ever-expanding borders, sought and found yet more apostles courtesy of Johnny O'Leary's valiant and spirited performance. Despite ill-health, this octogenarian feistily joined in the merriment both on and off stage, his pulse rate audibly racing as soon as his beloved accordion was strapped on. The polkas and slides of the Rushy Glen still soar skywards in his capable care, their appetite for revelry fuelled by O'Leary's still-glinting eye.
Of course there was much carousing to be done long after the record lights had dimmed. Another year's awards put to bed, another night's fun merely beginning.
Siobhan Long
