Irish Times writers run the rule over the latest offerings in the arts.

Proud

St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin

Bach - Partita No 1 in B flat, Fantasia in C minor, Capriccio in B flat, Partita No 2 in C minor

Music that tells a story more or less blow-by-blow is something normally associated with composers of the 19th century. Richard Strauss's lively tone poem on the adventures of a mischievous prankster in Till Eulenspiegel comes to mind.

In fact this kind of narrative programme music existed nearly 200 years earlier in Bach. Well, in one, solitary piece - the Capriccio in B flat on the Departure of his Beloved Brother - which harpsichordist Malcolm Proud included in his all-Bach solo recital at St Ann's Dawson Street. The 10-minute piece dates from some time between 1702 and 1704 when Bach was in his late teens.

Who exactly was departing is uncertain. But whoever it was inspired six short movements, each with its own descriptive title, that narrate the whole vignette from "the efforts of his friends to dissuade him from going" to the concluding "fugue in imitation of the post-horn" as the stage-coach rolls off.

Proud conjured up images for each moment, giving an energetic jaunt to the sprightly octave figure for the post-horn, and caressing poignant harmonies over the sad, descending bass-line of the central Adagissimo in which the friends lament the parting.

The short Fantasia in C minor, despite having no story-line, is much more dramatic than the Capriccio. It opens with a passionate flourish before charging into a web of chromatic intricacy which Proud illuminated with his exceptionally crisp articulation. He opened and closed his recital with the First and Second Partitas respectively. The First - warm and approachable in B flat major - he took at an almost a leisurely tempo until the darting hand-crossing of the final Gigue. His tone was weightier and the mood more serious in the denser textures of No. 2 in C minor.

Michael Dungan

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Journey's End

Grand Opera House, Belfast

When R.C. Sherriff wrote his first major play in 1929, memories of the first World War were still fresh. Never again, it was said, would such dreadful events be allowed to recur. But, more than 70 years later, lessons have not been learned and these stark images of suffering and fortitude continue to haunt and shock and sicken.

There are reasons why this quintessentially English portrayal of life in the trenches of northern France should fail as a piece of drama. The all-male cast is confined to the spartan comfort of the officers' dug-out, while the main event rages outside. But Sherriff's finely drawn characters, his observation of the workings of the military hierarchy, the vivid images of two massed armies facing each other across a stretch of mud the width of a rugby pitch, entice us into a tightly knit human circle, where alcohol, tobacco and stretched-out rations supply the main means of survival and oblivion.

In its original incarnation, the young Laurence Olivier played the damaged, inspirational company commander Capt Dennis Stanhope. In spite of one or two acoustic blips, Tom Wisdom cuts a strikingly tall, handsome figure, striding between drunken fool and military hero, adored and respected by his men for his obsessional devotion to duty and willingness to lead from the front.

But when Richard Glaves's innocent schoolboy officer Raleigh joins the company, Stanhope's icy composure is shot to pieces. At the heart of this disparate band of brothers is Philip Franks's steady, avuncular Lieut Osborne, a natural teacher and leader of men. When the final inevitable tragedy descends, a silenced audience is confronted by the powerful, emblematic spectre of a line of eternal warriors . . . but not before being subjected to the sound of a prolonged, gut-wrenching bombardment, a mere hint of what the innocents in Iraq have recently been suffering, in the name of freedom.

At the Grand Opera House until Saturday

Jane Coyle