It’s a kind of magic Glasgow Comedy Festival
Temirkanov smiles on Usher Hall with a potion of austerity and showmanship
Music ST PETERSBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, USHER HALL, EDINBURGH
MICHAEL TUMELTY
BRAVO to the Usher Hall. They pulled out the stops and secured a near-capacity house for the one-off appearance of Yuri Temirkanov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday night. And the band and conductor, in turn, pulled out their own stops with a set of vintage performances.
Temirkanov has mellowed. I’ve not seen him smiling so much at the orchestra in over 20 years. He is still a fantastic mixture of austere conductor and showman, but the music on Thursday was serious business. Temirkanov’s version of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony absolutely hit the nail on the head in its tempos, pacing and weighting. So many conductors today play silly what-nots with this piece. Temirkanov and his great orchestra got it deadright in its Russian-ness and its Haydnesque spirit. The symphony is a miraculously light piece; but, as this outfit demonstrated comprehensively, lightweight it is not.
I’ve been a fan of pianist Dmitri Alexeev for more than 20 years; and his barnstorming performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto swept the crowd before it. But I cannot pretend not to have noticed, the last few times I have heard him, and again on Thursday, less precision and more splashiness creeping into his playing.
The heart of the night, however, was the shattering performance of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, incredibly well gauged in the first movement’s explosion into violence, the Mahlerian “dig” of the Scherzo, the haunting intensity of the slow movement, and the gripping concentration of its relentless coda. What a show. What a band, with an inimitable blend of sophistication and intensity. And what a conductor in this magic man Temirkanov.
RSNO, GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL
MICHAEL TUMELTY
I’VE been banging on recently (and for years before that) about programme notes. Saturday’s RSNO concert produced a classic of the species. “Today Faure is probably best known for his elegant Pavane …” No he’s not. He’s best known for his Requiem and, orchestrally, for his other Pavane (For A Dead Princess). It was a footfault, but a daft one, in a programme, conducted by Douglas Boyd, that really centred on just a single performance: that of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto by pianist extraordinaire Ingrid Fliter.
Other than that it was a routine affair, with a performance of Bizet’s Suite from The Fair Maid Of Perth, an attractively scored but quite unmemorable opus from one of France’s greatest colourists and tunesmiths, and a piece that, by comparison, makes Berlioz’s Rob Roy, also played recently by the RSNO, seem electrifyingly original.
There was nothing wrong with Douglas Boyd’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony in the second half; nor with the playing. It’s just that, as rude as this must sound, it didn’t reveal anything interesting or challenging about the piece: it was fine but it had little to say; and this is a great, bracing composition, despite the fact it’s not on the scale of an Eroica or Choral Symphony.
Fliter’s astounding performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, on the other hand, had a great deal to reveal about the piece, through a performance that mixed steel articulation, unbroken lyricism and pellucid thinking with deeply expressive Romantic sentiment and poetry in indivisible combination: sheer, concentrated, magical musicianship. Not for nothing is Fliter regarded as one of the great Chopin-istes of the day.
JANEK GWIZDALA QUARTET, THE MANSION HOUSE, GLASGOW
ROB ADAMS
EYEING the backdrop advertising the venue’s regular comedy nights, Janek Gwizdala remarked that he should have prepared some jokes for Thursday’s concert. He needn’t have. Within a few bars of their first number the bass guitarist’s group was causing smiles and even giggles of approval among the crowd.
This is one of the most dynamic and inventive sets of musicians to pass through Glasgow in some time. Gwizdala himself is an amazing player. Having transferred the classical guitar technique he learned in his early teens on to the bass, he combines a punchy, dampened lower-register sound with quicksilver finger-picked patterns, stabs and strums to create a style that’s upfront in the music but never flashy or domineering.
His colleagues, saxophonist Bob Reynolds, keyboard player Gary Husband and drummer Louie Palmer, have similar attributes. Reynolds has a refined soloing style, sounding at times like Stanley Turrentine crossed with John Klemmer as he added careful electronic enhancement to music that fused emphatic, accessible grooves with wider jazz references. Reynolds also writes strong tunes, one of which found Husband using a vocal patch on his keyboard that allowed him to create an effect reminiscent of Bobby Mcferrin.
As for Palmer, he was a revelation. Using just snare, bass drum and floor tom he displayed a range of deftly applied rhythmic colour, a relaxed feel and economic bursts of energy especially effective on Gwizdala’s closing Give Me That Stern Look.
NUALA KENNEDY: A SUITE OF SCOTTISH INDUSTRY, QUEEN’S HALL, EDINBURGH
ROB ADAMS
IRISH flautist Nuala Kennedy has become a familiar figure over the past decade, notably with Fine Friday and Harem Scarem and through drawing musicians from differing styles into various projects, as she does here.
Gathering a sextet including experimental pop songwriter-guitarist Ziggy Campbell, jazz bassist Euan Burton and Shooglenifty founder member, mandolinist Iain Macleod, Kennedy has added film artist Ruth Barrie and secured support from Creative Scotland to collectively produce a series of pieces depicting Scotland’s industries past and present.
From drummer Donald Hay’s incorporation of Border weaving loom rhythms through guitarist Mike Bryan’s spoken word assisted commentary on factory fishing and on to Kennedy’s social media trip, Electric People, it covers a fair geographical and stylistic spread. Judging from the first performance, however, it’s all a bit undercooked.
Burton’s portrayal of the energy industries, an ambitious undertaking in itself, was one of the more successful elements, combining reflective and purposeful passages and using gentle mandolin and louder guitar figures effectively. Kennedy and Campbell’s forays into a naive pop style, including a check-out bleep-inspired keyboard figure to denote barcode scanning, also had their moments.
The presentation, both in terms of clarity of song lyrics and on-stage introductions, left something to be desired, though, and it often seemed as if grafting on a set of functional, if ably played, tune sets was a handy way of stretching rather slight material in place of genuine development.
DARA O BRIAIN: CRAIC DEALER, CLYDE AUDITORIUM
MARIANNE GUNN
BEING a professional Craic Dealer must be one of Dara O’briain’s most pleasurable vices, as it’s clear he is nowhere more at home than behind the footlights. Slightly more camp and excitable than he appears on Mock The Week and The Apprentice: You’re Fired, he admits he’s used to big-barn venues in Glasgow (he usually plays the Royal Concert Hall) but that the crowd always makes it worth it. Having been on the comedy circuit since university, O Briain’s latest fixation is the varying degrees of “sexy – or not” jobs out there, from fire fighting to data entry.
The beauty of any live comedy is the happy accident, the golden nugget of material that comes from the audience. On Friday, the Cliodriving bungalow gutter repairman who was ready for the next level had to be the find of the evening, although the BT security guy and narcoleptic mechanic also achieved a podium finish. Quick-thinking and sharpwitted, there was also a more physical element to these barbed but friendly jibes than previously seen: O Briain’s delivery is never going to venture near the mania of, for example, Lee Evans but there was evidence of a move away from purely cerebral banter.
More lengthy and with more belly-laugh material, the second half was not without its controversy. Arguing that racism is better than astrology may not get the horoscope readers on side, but his courtroom re-enactment of a defence for Psychic Sally certainly pleased the cynics. Always a celtic crowd-pleaser and on top form with his latest charm offensive; watch out, O Briain could prove addictive.