Irish Times writers review a selection of recent events in Dublin

Hazelzet, Kilkenny Camerata

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

MICHAEL DUNGAN

Listeners foresaw this would be a great one and packed the Hugh Lane Gallery until, alas, no more could be admitted. Bach, period instruments, excellent players, free admission.

And incredible music. Clearly present were fans of The Musical Offering, with its "Royal" theme provided by Prussia's King Frederick II and given a comprehensive going-over by Bach. His straightforward canons, like rounds, were readily spotted, but there was much else that was hard or impossible for the ear to detect or follow, such as canons where the second voice is the same as the first one, only upside down or backwards. And somehow it all just sounds like Baroque chamber music.

Bach had a point to prove. When he visited the royal palace, the king gave him his royal theme and challenged him to improvise a three-part fugue upon it. It was so easy for Bach that the King said: how about six? Bach declined but composed one upon his return to Leipzig, plus all the canons and a four-movement trio sonata, all part of the Offering, all derived from the royal theme.

The other players withdrew to seats as harpsichordist Malcolm Proud opened the concert with what is generally reckoned to be Bach's transcription of the improvised three-part fugue (or ricercare), and then again when he later gave the fully composed six-part fugue. Even with music for two hands in six voices spread over six staves, Proud serenely executed with a delivery that took full account of every appearance of the theme, that shaped the accompanying figures, that was always leading somewhere.

Joining the Kilkenny Camerata on the line written for the king, an accomplished flautist, was Wilbert Hazelzet, first flautist in Ton Koopman's Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. He combined strength with softness and conjured colour from the baroque flute's sweet but limited palette.

Camerata violinists Maya Homburger and Marja Gaynor turned the most mind-boggling canons into playful conversations, and cellist Sarah McMahon came into her own in the trio sonata. In all, a superb and free concert, for which much credit is due to the Arts Council and the councils of Dublin City and Kilkenny County and Borough.

Crash Ensemble

O'Reilly Theatre, Dublin

MARTIN ADAMS

This well-structured programme presented the British side of a two-concert showcase for Irish and British contemporary music. It included the premiere of a Crash Ensemble commission, Darwin's Sin Draw, by Andrew Poppy (born 1954), which explores musical equivalents of Darwinian ideas. The solo violin (an excellent Darragh Morgan) tussles with the bass-strong ensemble's jagged ostinatos and driving rhythms, and seems to win. But a problem niggles, of an unsettling, probably intentional incongruity between strong material and unrounded form.

It is hard to write funny music, but Cornish-born (1965) Richard Ayers can. His No 24 (NONcerto for Alto Trombone)(1995) featured impeccably silly interpretations of Ayres's stage directions by trombonist Roderick O'Keefe and tight conducting by Alan Pierson. The piece subverts all concert music, via musical non-sequiturs such as a chorus of lager louts and irreverent contrasts of material.

Prison Song, (2000)by Frank Denyer (born 1943), is more subtly subversive. The flautist does not blow, but breathes; the violin and trombone have muffling mutes - "the ghost of another music" indeed.

Straight Lines in Broken Times2, (1992)by Christopher Fox (born 1955), is a densely worked-out piece, full of concentrated detail, albeit within a somewhat diffuse structure. Nevertheless, its so-British concern with craft is admirable.

Craft was also evident in the control of material and the subtly powerful rhythmic energy of Grind Show(electric) (2007), by Tansy Davies (born 1973). It also lay behind the beautifully clear trajectories of Joe Cutler's (born 1968) Five Mobiles after Alexander Calder. The concert's most consistently luxurious aural experience was offered by Gavin Bryars's (born 1943) Sub Rosa (1986). Its shifts of instrumental tone, harmonics, and chordal colouring challenged the ear and lingered in the memory.