The Irish Timesreviews Fidelio Trio and Siirala, RTÉ NSO/Rophé at the NCH and
Jesus Has My Mom in There And Has Beat Her Up Real Badin the Fringe
Fidelio Trio
NCH John Field Room, Dublin
Music21’s chamber-music series continued with a recital by Ireland’s Fidelio Trio that was devoted to the music of Belfast-born composer Deirdre Gribbin.
The trio's members – Darragh Morgan (violin), Robin Michael (cello) and Mary Dullea (piano) – gave four works for as many instrumental combinations: Seeking the Whirlwind's Secrets(2007) for violin and piano, Rothko Choral(1997) for piano solo, Seen Through It(2005) for violin and cello, and How to Make the Water Sound(1997) for piano trio.
Gribbin’s style might be described as one of introverted eclecticism. Her music dwells on feelings stimulated by nature, literature, philosophy and the visual arts, freely combining traditional resources such as triads and folksy tunes with dissonant clusters, disjointed counterpoint, and (sometimes) profusions of silence.
Themes, to the extent they can be discerned as such, are seldom the starting points; rather, a long and delicate forage for ideas culminates in some design of unalloyed simplicity. Despite the occasional whiff of Debussy, a pervading mood of freshness and desolation suggests Arctic sunlight. Slow or fast, each piece takes its own time.
The earliest and latest items were a decade apart, and seemed to indicate an increase in the metabolic rate of Gribbin’s output over that period.
For all its more urgent details (and the Fidelio Trio's 12-year absorption of them), How to Make the Water Soundremained more than moderately reflective in comparison with the two more recent, busier works (both of which were receiving their Irish premieres).
Against Dullea's polished and trustworthy pianism, Morgan started out with some unsettled intonation. His duet with Michael, however, came off with accomplished stylishness, turning sparse means to sonorous ends. ANDREW JOHNSTONE
Siirala, RTÉ NSO/Rophé
NCH, Dublin
Brahms – Piano Concerto No 1. Beethoven – Symphony No 5.
The first Leipzig performance of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto in January 1859 was one of the 19th-century’s great musical fiascos.
According to the then 25-year-old composer, the “three pairs of hands” that tried to clap were quickly overcome by “a clear hissing on all sides”.
But, in truth, the Leipzig audience’s response is probably less remarkable than the favourable reception the work had received at its actual premiere in Hanover five days earlier. The concerto is a mould-breaking work, a concerto unprecedented in its stormy passion, and on a scale that was highly unusual – its first movement alone plays for as long as any of the piano concertos of Liszt or Mendelssohn.
French conductor, Pascal Rophé, opening the new RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra season, launched the work with a thunderous drum roll and a cutting drive that left no one in any doubt about the work’s fiery character.
The soloist, Antti Siirala, took a slightly different approach, playing with the kind of beautifully manicured keyboard command that meant his composure never seemed ruffled.
The feeling secured by Rophé and his players of being driven to the edge was not replicated by the pianist, and he shied away from probing too deeply into the elevated calm of the slow movement. He seemed at all times in mature, worldly-wise control of the stresses and visions of this young man’s music. It was an impressive achievement that seemed somehow to tell less than the full story.
Rophé was keen to make an impression, too, in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He rocketed into the famous opening motif with an alacrity that seemed calculated to unsettle his listeners, and the urgency and fieriness of his consistently visceral approach were underlined through biting asides from the trumpets, and a sense of pressure that was almost unrelenting.
The pressure was not always well controlled. After the successful exhilaration of the first movement, the music-making came to seem at times forced, and there were more than a few moments where the balances were ill-judged – upper strings under pressure, for instance, allowed to dominate more important messages from other sections of the orchestra, and a sense of breathlessness that was too prevalent.
But, unlike some more well-mannered performances of the work, he did communicate the symphony as an extraordinary journey, an expression of something probing at and transcending the boundaries of the possible. MICHAEL DERVAN
FRINGE
Jesus Has My Mom in There And Has Beat Her Up Real Bad **
Absolut Fringe Factory
First-time playwrights are often susceptible to cliches: blurted exposition, say, or the moment anyone put a gun in a drawer.
In this age of the playfully postdramatic, new forms appear no less susceptible to over-familiar tropes: idle A-frame ladders, say, or the moment anyone breaks into a Radiohead song. Dee Roycroft’s first play as writer and director for Loose Canon is exemplary within this form, its textual montage juxtaposing her childhood recollections of Guinea with scientific theories on regeneration and memory, its method ushering plainclothes actors into workshop games and detached, yet emotive, reportage sequences. Such studied disconnectedness can stimulate and delight, but as it stagnates into rote formula, intrigue can lead to frustration, then boredom.
It's a shame, because Roycroft has fascinating ideas about the politics and imperative of movement and a genuine compassion for Africa. Both are smothered by the forced restlessness of a mocking technique. Jesus may appear to offer information about the brain, probability and sand migration, but a dramaturg would make a better saviour. Ends today. PETER CRAWLEY
