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Cuarteto Casals

Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin

Arriaga - Quartet No 3. Shostakovich - Quartet No 3. Turina - La Oración del Torero. Schubert - Quartet in A minor D804

Named after the Catalan cellist whom many regarded as the finest instrumentalist of his time, Cuarteto Casals are now in their ninth season. On their second visit to Ireland this year, with a programme slanted toward the Latin theme of the current festival of Music in Great Irish Houses, their playing was uncannily unified.

In Schubert's Rosamunde Quartet, and in the last of the three quartets by the precocious and tragically short-lived Basque composer Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, their astonishingly synchronous liberty with tempos was as disconcerting as watching tennis would be if the ball were invisible to everyone except the players.

Though there was never a hint of untidiness about the ensemble, Arriaga's superbly contrapuntal finale was dashed off with a hot-blooded, Hispanic abandon that was at odds with the music's aristocratic and thoroughly cosmopolitan accents.

The formidable thrust of the group's combined willpower wasn't just directed toward rubato; it had a cumulative effect on dynamics, too.

In Schubert's music particularly, nuances that ought to have been merely flattering tended to aggregate into insistent mannerisms, while Arriaga's Beethovenian Pastorale changed scenes with an abruptness that was merely theatrical rather than dramatic.

In two Spanish impressions - Turina's of a bullfighter at prayer and, as an encore, de Falla's of a dancing miller - Cuarteto Casals played with native appropriateness.

But it was with a Russian composer, and one who demands nothing less than the total commitment of his interpreters, that they seemed to come into their own.

Perhaps the cadaverous fourth movement of Shostakovich's epic Third Quartet became unnecessarily animated in places, but there was Chaplinesque parody in the feigned high spirits of the opening Allegro, jaw-clenching fury in the scherzo, and a timeless, twilit finale whose spell an engrossed audience was reluctant to break with its applause.

Andrew Johnstone

Carvin Jones

Séamus Ennis Centre, Naul, Co Dublin

The blues comes in many shapes and forms, and most of them by this stage are, if not formulaic, then certainly structured in a wholly recognisable format. This is what makes the blues equal parts thoroughly acceptable and occasionally downright boring.

What makes one blues guitarist stand out from another, then, is not so much technique, talent, proficiency and/or expertise as application.

Tucked away in a leafy village in north Co Dublin, this cosy venue might not have a beer-stained House of Blues badge stapled to its rafters (it's more accustomed to staging bluegrass, folk, and traditional music gigs), but it's the perfect size for someone as up-and-coming as hotshot Texan blues guitarist Carvin Jones.

For those whose idea of the blues is forged out of certain mythologies, someone like Jones is not going to shatter preconceptions.

Here is a guy whose life has been saved by his dedication to the blues, from listening to his grandfather's BB King records to gigging week-in, week-out for the past 15 years.

It's an uphill struggle, of course, but you can sense that Jones has it in him to continue for as long as it takes.

Backed by veteran musicians that bring to mind a hint of Spinal Tap, Jones sails through a series of sharp, short blues tracks that embrace his own quite evocative style as well as his many influences.

Songs such as Hoochie Coochie Man, Purple Haze, Crossroads, and Johnnie B Goode get the audience shifting in their seats, while Jones's measured showmanship - half showboating, half teasing - brings a smile to the face.

Anything new or groundbreaking? Not even close, but if he's in your town next time around be sure to look him up - Carvin Jones is as honest and genuine as the day is long.

Tony Clayton-Lea