Irish Times writers review the ConTempo String Quartet at Dublin's IMMA and Josh Rouse at The Village, also in Dublin.
ConTempo String Quartet
IMMA, Dublin
Michael Dungan
Boydell - Oboe Quintet; The Feather of Death; String Quartet No 1
"Spies and communists" was how the late Brian Boydell described the perception in certain quarters of the White Stag Group, a loose gathering of British and Irish painters in Ireland in the 1940s. Paintings by the group - including two by Boydell himself - currently feature in a special exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
In association with the exhibition, Sunday's afternoon concert in the Baroque Chapel at IMMA presented three works from Boydell's White Stag days.
The Oboe Quintet, although written in 1939-1940 after Boydell gave up his studies at London's Royal College of Music and returned to Dublin, does not sound like war-inspired music. The outer movements comprise a genial grazioso opening and a final Presto barbarico which, with its insistent repetition of rhythmic patterns, is perhaps more feisty than barbaric. The slow middle movement has a nostalgic character whose warm lyricism was nicely captured by oboist Síle Daly. Overall, the most prominent of various influences in this early piece is the English pastoral style then still beloved of the London conservatories.
Within three years this style had moved on significantly, as illustrated in his 1943 settings of texts by fellow White Stag painter Thurloe Conolly, The Feather of Death. In three songs that rather chillingly relate grief and nature, Boydell is freer and sharper in his use of dissonance, creating an angst-tinged sound to accompany straightforward, honest responses to the words. Baritone Roland Davitt's darkly-focused delivery was well-suited to the atmosphere. There is little trace of English pastoral in the 1949 String Quartet no 1, the afternoon's clearest expression of Boydell's maturing, individual voice. The ConTempo were sure-footed and persuasive in their navigation of its well-measured swings between serenity and tension, agitation and bleakness.
Josh Rouse
The Village, Dublin
Tony Clayton-Lea
All the way from the commercial hub of country music (Nashville, Tennessee) via the somewhat more becalming environs of Algea, Spain, Josh Rouse is a conundrum that's difficult to crack. From his emergence several years ago, he has jumped from one musical style to another with the grace and speed of a gazelle; it'd be nice for all concerned, surely, if he decided which area he felt the most comfortable with - in his case, disparity and eclecticism are more distracting than advantageous.
It's all executed in fine style, but from the softer singer-songwriter material to the tougher funk/soul/pop-orientated songs, listening to Rouse is a bit like viewing footage from the 1973-1974 series of The Old Grey Whistle Test: isn't that Steely Dan over there? And, look - didn't that guy used to be Boz Scaggs? And doesn't that "Oh, yeah" refrain totally reference David Bowie? Occasionally, TOGWT is replaced by The Tube - Prefab Sprout second on the bill to Aztec Camera, who co-headline with The Smiths. Sound frustrating? It is - it seems more an exercise in showing off influences than coming up with distinct music.
Songs such as Dressed Up Like Nebraska (an early Rouse song) and newer material such as It's the Nighttime form a link between aspirations and achieved ambitions, and it's a measure of his strengths that Rouse imbues each (and most of the material in between) with a commitment to excellence. Yet the nagging feeling remains that Rouse and his band of mid-1970s, FM-influenced musicians (complete with a Napoleon Dynamite-lookalike bass player) are subservient to style rather than substance.
