I’m not long back from a show at the lovely Theatre Royal in Waterford called Vladimir’s Viennese Christmas which was bliss with lots of Strauss, polkas and, most of all a sense of family.
Vladimir is the third son in a family of musicians. He emigrated to Ireland from Slovakia about five years ago with a view to moving away from music but ended up busking on Grafton Street in Dublin and then becoming deeply involved in musical performance again.
What adds so much to this Christmas Performance is the fact that it brings together his mother, father, sister and three brothers. Music seems to run in this family as thickly as blood and it is like listening to instinct as they play with a bondedness that one associates with identical twins.
Walking from the Theatre Royal back along the Quay with the River Suir shimmering beneath all the Christmas lights, I couldn’t but think of Waterford’s great poet, Sean Dunne (1956-1995) and this particular poem of his:
Matching the Note
A piano tinkles as a cradle rocks,
a lullaby tapped in tuned morse
when a blackbird stops at a window.
adding to the song its own sound.
It pecks at berries and then
as if to match the ivory note,
resumes its music on the sill
in a world where wishes seem granted.
(from Collected Sean Dunne, 2005, edited by Peter Fallon, Gallery Press).
SOCIAL BRIDGE ~ Jean Tubridy connecting with you from Ireland 