Episode 2 The Arts Show

Hello. You're very welcome to The Arts Show in the first of two

specials focusing on the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queens of

it's a big year for Queens as they celebrate their 50th festival since

it began. We're here to bring you the best of the festival coverage

of the next two weeks. Charles Dickens's bicentenary is widely

celebrated at this year's festival. We examine his enduring appeal.

World-renowned soloist Maxim Rysanov performs an intimate

recital for the Arts Show. Acclaimed artist Nele Azevedo

reveals her unique ice sculptures commemorating Titanic victims at

Belfast Square, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo played the Waterfront on

Sunday. They took time out to give us an exclusive performance.

Well, as we know, this is now the 50th Belfast Festival at Queens,

but it's not actually the 50th anniversary. There were a few years

it didn't happen along the way. From quite humble beginnings it's

grown in reputation and stature to become one of the most prominent

arts festivals on the British Isles. Let's have a look at how it all

began. At 50, the Belfast Festival at Queens really has something to

celebrate. What began in the early '60s as a bit of crack is now the

third biggest arts festival in the UK. It has an established

international reputation, programming everything from theatre

to dance, lectures to literature, film to the visual arts, making it

arguably Northern Ireland's annual cultural show piece. Opinions vary

about when it actually started. There were student festivals in the

early '60, but the temp plait that stuck was when a -

PROBLEM WITH SOUND Was offered the post of first

festival director in 1964. Under emmerson, the festival grew in

popularity. In the Whitla Hall, it became one of the most popular

draws attracting performers from both sides of the Atlantic

including George Melly and Dizzy Gillespie. Emerson left to become

part of RCA's classic label and Galloway's manager. The festival

didn't happen in 1970 and '71 with the recent troubles a contributing

factor. In 1973 a new director, Michael Barnes took over and

remained director until 1994. During his years the festival

attracted the likes of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Laurence

Olivier, Yehudi Menuhin, Judi Dench, Petula Clark, Clement Freud, Ben

Kingsley and Richard Stilgoe, to name a few.

Monty Python's Michael Palin was convinced by Michael Barnes to

bring his one-man show exclusively to Belfast. Michael Palin loved it

so much, he refused to perform it anywhere else, saying it couldn't

be better than at the Belfast Festival. Other names to appear

earlier in their career include Billy Connolly, Rowan Atkinson,

Victoria Wood, Seamus Heaney, James Galway and even Van Morrison.

Despite the Troubles, the festival kept going through the '70s and by

the '80s it had expanded into two weeks across the city, hosting

everything from the Moscow State Ballet to the Flying Pickets. It's

had its ups and downs, but the Queens University has been

instrumental in the city's cultural Renaissance and is still going

strong. And what better way to mark the

50th than with a fanfare, a specially commissioned work to

Herald the opening of this year's festival. The idea was that

musicians would be sort of calling to each other across the space

inside Victoria Square. Finding the right location for this was

critical, somewhere like Victoria Square which is a real landmark

building, but it also provides a wonderful acoustic. You can imagine

how the sounds of all of those 50 instruments will gather and rise up

into the dome. It's absolutely right for the space, and I think

it's really going to blow some people's, so off. There are lots of

novel things about this piece - the audience is free to walk around.

You can, as a member of the audience, go and stand next to

somebody. Later on, all the musicians leave their locations and

all gather together in the ground floor of the Victoria Square.

I then take over as a conductor, and that really reveals a very

different sound. It's now focused and very intense. The very last bar

is the only straight forward conducted bar in the piece.

What a roll call of names there - amazing. I am joined by Eithne

Shortall for the Sunday Times and Joe Nawaz. They're going to be with

us for the next two weeks to give us their views. First impressions?

First impressions are very promising. It's just what you want

from a festival so it takes the best from the local arts so

musicians like Van Morrison and films such as Jump, then it mixs

that with an eclectic range from everywhere else. There are a lot of

comedians from the south and theatre from Britain. It has

captured the cultural whirlwind that is the Belfast Festival. I

caught the opening bars of Waterloo Sunset, so that was a microcome of

You're going to be with us for the next two programmes. Thank you.

This year marks 200 years since birth of Charles Dickens and the

Queens University is celebrating with a variety of exhibitions,

readings and performances in unusual venues such as May Street

Church and the Templemore Baths in Belfast. Writer Ian Sansom

investigates why after all this time we shouldn't just read, but

also listen, to Dickens. And now he made for the wreck,

rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the

rugged foam. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous

strokes, he would be clinging to it when a high, green, vast hillside

of water moving on shoreward from beyond the ship - he seemed to leap

up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone. On Friday, the

15th of January, 1869 Charles Dickens walked out centre stage

here at the Ulster Hall in Belfast and read from his novel, David

Copperfield. In his youth, Dickens had aspired to be an actor. Now he

was getting his chance. So what the Belfast audience got that night was

not just a reading from a book. It was a dramatic performance. Can you

tell us about the reception that Charles Dickens received when he

arrived in Belfast? We have accounts of people who came to

listen to Dickens read. People ran over themselves and fell over the

top of themselves to get to their places. People thought that he was

the superstar of his age, and they wanted to have a piece of him, and

this is why the public performance was so important. It wasn't enough

to read the books. They wanted to see him. One of the things I admire

about Dickens is that he was a dramatic writer, although, of

course, he wasn't a dramatist, and we know that it's sometimes

difficult to translate what's on the page to what's on the stage.

But a new adaptation of Nicholas Nickelby is putting the words of

the characters in the novel into the mouths of actors. I have seen

the parents of some boys, and they're so glad to hear how he was

getting on that there's no prospect at all of you going away. It's very

good. It's very good, and that - He has an eye for observation. He

has an ear for dialogue, and in the course of researching this, he

heard the Yorkshire dialect, and he's able to translate that on to

the page. And look after that spoon, or I'll give you enough... Yeah, I

need you really to be showing me - "And you look after that -"

much do you think his own interest in acting influenced the way that

he wrote? Well, when he was writing his novels, he would get up from

the desk, and get - and go into character. His body would change.

He would be using his hands and his voice, and so he acted it out, and

he would scuttle back to the desk and the actor then translated what

was going on inside himself and in his imagination on to the page.

Some of the finest passages in Dickens are when he's describing a

place or an atmosphere or a mood. He wasn't just a storyteller. He

was a conjurer of images. Dickens in the dark seats the audience in

cubicles in a disused Victorian bathhouse and lets his words work

their magic. "That man was the man that I had seen along Piccadilly

and whose face was the colour of impure wax." What is it, then,

about Dickens' language that enables you to turn it into drama?

His descriptions are so precise, and he evokes so much detail in the

world of the story that it's quite easy to visualise that folly and

imagine that as a soundscape. I think it's very easy for an actor

to take a passage of Dickens' prose and perform it. Because he wrote

especially to be heard, it lends itself very easily to audio theatre

and to the kind of work we do. inward expectation of seeing the

figure in the dressing room in the dark, and I did not see it there.

In Dickens' time, reading was a social and a sociable activity.

People didn't just curl up with a good book. They would read and

recite to one another, and so parlours across the land would echo

to the sound of Great Expectation and Oliver Twist. It was a ghastly

figure to look upon. The murderer staggered backward to the wall, and

shutting out the sight with his hand seized the heavy club and

struck her down! Dickens was an entertainer. He understood that

prose, like poetry and drama, when it's most honest and moving and

sincere, is when it's performed, when it's voiced out loud on stage.

APPLAUSE Joe, does anybody read Dickens

today Probably get the book of the film after having seen it in the

cinema or on TV but Dickens himself - he read his own work. He was a

performer as well as being a campaigning novelist, so I think

one of the best mediums to see him in is the spoken word as she and I

did at the Ulster Museum recently. He was an incredible performer. He

would have loved the amount of work of his that reaches the screen now.

That's it. He had early aspiration of being an actor, and when that

didn't work, he combined the two. At the Ulster Museum you can see a

replica of the lectern he would have read off of. It's carved out.

You can see his legs, and it's quite low. Basically, health you to

see him reading the work. You can see the text. He underlined certain

words to emphasise it and altered it to make it a play and less of a

reading text. What else struck you about his work at the festival?

thing I learned, interestingly, about his work, is he found this to

be a fine place with a rough people. He also found that he couldn't read

the Nancy passage from Oliver Twist because we were Highly strung

already. Oh. Actually, one of the readings we have done at the

festival is that piece. It did get a reading here. How did it work,

hearing that Nancy piece taken out of the book and dramatised? It was

very good. It was done by a member of the English Department of

Queenss. He's obviously an enthusiast himself. He happened -

didn't happen to be wearing did he wore his gear. That's his look.

put his heart and soul into it because obviously he wanted to do

justice to the man he idolises. would be your favourite character?

Out of Dicken, I have recently read Hard Times so fresh in my mind is

Mr Guardgrimes, the pursuer of facts, facts. And you? I am going

with Nancy, a heart of gold and comes to a sticky end. The viola is

often the forgotten stringed instrument of the orchestra.

Ukranian musician Maxim Rysanov has established himself as one of the

world's leading viola soloists performing the small body of work

written for the instrument. He played St George's Church Saturday

in Belfast as part of the festival. We're delighted he took time to

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 146 seconds

perform exclusively for The Arts Guy and a cellist, so why am I

feeling that why has this violin guy taken all the best music?

a lot of these pieces have been adapted for the final lap. The

pieces for the viola would definitely the strongest pieces.

You felt whenever you heard music specifically written for the viola

that the tone of the instrument just sank. I was Saviola version.

The viola for me is somewhere between the cello and violin. It is

almost a human voice like quality to it. He didn't come to life for

me before the piano came in. There was a wonderful counterpoint

between the two instruments. would go back and see it played

again? I would if they were specifically for the viola.

Internationally acclaimed Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo is known for

creating interventions, or temporary monuments, in cities

worldwide such as Sao Paulo, Havana and Tokyo since 2002. Entitled

Minimum Monument, the travelling project features large numbers of

ice figures celebrating the anonymous everyman in contrast to

traditional permanent structures. For the Queen's Festival, she's

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 146 seconds

created 1,517 of the figures, one A fitting tribute to the Titanic?

Weirdly, I found it moving. Lifting the little ice sculptures and

putting them on the steps. Just when we started the sun came out.

Did you find it moving? Not really. I thought it looked very pretty. As

a tribute to the Titanic, would you use melted ice? As a festival

events and something to bring the family to eat, it is lovely. We did

our bit, we put up six or seven each. I accidentally stepped two

together and they went down as a couple. You could have a little bit

of individual creativity. By the end there was this what sensation

of being watched by the Ice People. Still, very much a festival piece.

Music figures large each Festival and here, with his pick of this

Thanks, Marie-Louise. We'll start with one of this year's big hitters,

the Buena Vista Social Club. Ry Cooder's original recordings of

Cuba's thriving music scene sold something like seven million copies

worldwide when they were released in 1996, sparking a passion for

pure, pulsating Cuban music that's kept growing to this day. Naturally,

the line up has changed down the years, but the vibe remains as

thrilling as ever. Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, the latest

incarnation of the collective, are a 15-piece band direct from Havana.

They bring the heat to The Ulster Hall on Tuesday night. Take my

advice and slip on your dancing shoes for this one.

On an altogether different, but just as exciting tip, are Beach

House who provide one of this weekend's must-see highlights.

Everyone in the know is dropping their name right now so it's the

perfect time to see them. A duo from Baltimore, their sound is

dream pop in the drowsiest, trippiest sense - kind of like the

Velvet Underground played at the wrong speed! If that sounds right

up your sonic street, they're at the Mandela Hall in Queens

University tomorrow night. The term Legends of Irish Folk

hardly covers it in the case of Altan. County Donegal's finest have

been trailblazers for traditional music here for three decades and

performed everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the Albert Hall,

collaborating with everyone from Dolly Parton to the Chieftains.

They're playing as part of Festival's 50 Shades Of Green, a

celebration of Irish poetry, literature, music and film. Catch

them in The Mac in Belfast on Saturday.

Outside of Festival there are some essential gigs happening in the

next week I'd point you to. Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess

makes a rare solo appearance in support of his excellent new album,

Oh No I Love You, at the Stiff Kitten in Belfast on Saturday night

One of the most wildly exciting collectives currently on the local

traditional scene, At First Light, bring their unique blend of old and

modern to the Alley Theatre in Strabane also on Saturday night.

And, finally, hugely acclaimed alt- country duo The Civil Wars promote

their Grammy Award Winning album Barton Hollow with a gig at the

Mandela Hall in Belfast on Sunday. Definitely one not to miss.

Thanks, Ralph. Nor will you choose this week? Another good play will

be Macbeth at the Lyric. We imagined and said Northern Ireland.

Thanks to my guests, Eithne Shortall and Joe Nawaz, who'll be

back next week for the second of our Festival Specials. Until then

you can keep up to date on BBC Radio Ulster each week day with our

Festival Desk at 11.55am and Arts Extra at 6.30pm.

We leave you tonight with a special performance from the South African

choir best known for appearing on Paul Simon's seminal solo album,