JULIET WELCHMAN (CELLO), ICO/STEPHEN HOUGH (PIANO) University Concert Hall, Limerick Thurs 8pm €10-€30 061-331549; CIT Cork School of Music, Cork Fri 27th 8pm €20, €30 1890 923543; NCH, Dublin Sun 29th 8pm €10-€30 01-4170000

Last year Gramophone magazine marked the 30th anniversary of its Gramophone Awards. Panels of critics made short-lists and the public was invited to vote. The Gramophone Award Gold Disc went to Stephen Hough’s 2001 Hyperion recording of Saint-Saëns’s complete piano concertos.

Hough, sadly, has been only a sporadic visitor to Ireland, most recently in 2005, for a concert with cellist Steven Isserlis. He’s back this week, though, for three concerts in which he will take a triple role with the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

He plays the piano – in concertos by Mozart ( the Concerto in C, K467, now nicknamed after the film Elvira Madigan), and Mendelssohn ( the Concerto in G minor, Op 25). He conducts – Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. And he features as composer (and conductor) in his own The Loneliest Wilderness,in which the leader of the orchestra's cello section, Juliet Welchman, is the soloist.