Irish Timeswriters review a selection of recent events.
Homburger, Guy, Adams
St Audoen's Church, Dublin
The Baroque-contemporary crossover component in this year's annual Dublin Handel Festival was provided by string duo Maya Homburger and Barry Guy in collaboration with harpsichordist David Adams.
Homburger plays a gut-strung Italian violin that dates from around the time Handel was in Ireland. Guy accompanied her on his five-string bass in one of the Mystery Sonatascomposed in the 1670s by Heinrich Biber, and in his own Celebration. His improvised accompaniment to Celebrationcontributed much colour and counter-argument to an already sparkling and self-contained violin part.
The programme's other new offering, by Irish composer Benjamin Dwyer, brought all three players together. Passacailleis the alter-ego of Dwyer's Piano Trio II, but the exchange of piano and cello for harpsichord and double bass gives it a radically different feel.
Homburger and Adams made up the rest of the programme with Bach's G-major sonata BWV 1019 and Handel's two A-major sonatas for violin and continuo. Though both played the Bach with elan, its prescriptive notation and fastidiously crafted textures offered fewer opportunities for the spontaneity and dash with which they dispatched the Handel. It was Handel's festival, and it was Handel's concert. - ANDREW JOHNSTONE
Boss
The Granary, Cork
One of the consequences of mounting an indifferent play, as with Meridian Theatre company's production of Bossby Thomas Hall, is that the audience has opportunities to notice the discomforts of the surroundings. The new seating arrangements in the Granary auditorium - narrow and framed in steel railings - are reminiscent of "lock-down" gratings in a jail. On this occasion, perhaps, this is appropriate, as the protagonist of Hall's essay on the undoubted evils of Irish property development deserves to be in jail, or suspects he does. But maybe he doesn't. It's hard to tell as the piece is a rambling monologue which never settles on an actual plot.
Hall writes with imagination but without insight, in this case.
Despite the formless pacing which mirrors the play's lack of structure, Michael Loughnan as builder and developer Jim Kielty brings his considerable presence to the depiction of a character who, despite his hits on Muslim immigration, apartment rentals, female circumcision and possible incest, still manages to remain - if the pun will be pardoned - undeveloped. - MARY LELAND
James Galway, Jeanne Galway, UO/Krajewski
NCH, Dublin
Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway were the Ulster Orchestra's guests in a programme that spanned from the formally classical to the unstuffily entertaining - the range that has made Galway the household name of flute playing.
Their duet items, adapted from Mozart by David Overton, occupied a mid-point between the extremes. While Rondo alla Turcais a colourfully spiced-up version of the original piano composition, The Magic Flutesis an extended duo concertantepieced together from an array of Mozartiana. Dozens of random quotations jostle through this genial collage, but the whole is decidedly less than the sum of its parts.
Pure Mozart came in the form of the Concerto in D K314, where, despite a niggling sharpness, Sir James's solo playing was magisterially communicative.
Two further Overton concoctions, Loch Mozartand Badinereelerie, proved genuinely funny meeting-grounds of classical and Celtic tunes, as well as cueing a spate of Galway gags. A Henry Mancini set (including The Pink Pantherand Baby Elephant Walk) unleashed saxophonic sleaze from optimally amplified flute and tin whistle.
The orchestra was directed with slick effortlessness by Michael Krajewski. - ANDREW JOHNSTONE
