Capriol Suite - Warlock
Hum! - Siobhan Cleary
The Four Seasons - Vivaldi
The Temple Bar Music Centre, where the Irish Chamber Orchestra performed last weekend, is primarily a venue for rock music: there were many more spotlights than there were musicians and the black walls were antipathetic to the music. Thus Warlock's Capriol Suite seemed a rather dated exercise in the arrangement of 16th-century tunes.
The work which came across most successfully was Siobhan Cleary's Hum! This is for two speakers and string orchestra and the spoken parts are as important as the music, if not more so. The dialogue, delivered by Aiden Condron and Michael Billington, is limited to two syllables, spoken by the first voice and echoed by the second, in a manner reminiscent of a musical structure. When the echo becomes an independent voice the confrontation veers from humour to seriousness. The music, stormy at first, and finally richly contrapuntal, acts like a Greek chorus, commenting on the dialogue, but not accompanying it. Produced by Jeff Gormley, Hum! is a neat coup de theatre.
Vivaldi's Four Seasons was as delightful as ever, even if the surroundings militated against it. The orchestra stood, in 18th-century style, and were lead by the soloist, Fionnuala Hunt. There was a great sense of unanimity so that the solo passages were naturally integrated into the passages for the whole band, just as a chorus and verse in a song.