NCH, Dublin Beethoven and Haydn arranged Scottish and Irish airs

Slavonic dances, Hungarian rhapsodies, and the folk-music of far-flung places were a long-standing 19th-century fashion. And composers in the 20th century combined serious musicology in the study of ethnic music with a range of ways of arranging it and writing original pieces in ethnic styles.

So what’s special about the idea of Dave Flynn writing a concerto for fiddle and orchestra for Martin Hayes? Well, Flynn’s new Aontacht, premiered by Hayes with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under David Brophy on Wednesday, is no conventional concerto.

There’s not really much in the way of dialogue or give and take. It’s a vehicle for a traditional musician, with the orchestra cast in the role of a backing group, a sometimes assertive and noisy backing group, but a backing group nonetheless.

And the soloist is worked pretty hard, with hardly a pause for breath. The solo part is unconventional, too – all notated with precision, but not intended to be played as written. It’s more on the lines of a template, which the fiddler can adapt to his own preferred inflections or spur-of-the-moment inspiration.

Hayes is one of those players who projects a great sense of long-term purpose. His energy feels as if it’s focused on a point that’s well ahead of wherever he’s actually at. You don’t just want to hear him in the now, you want to stay with him to experience the future he’s so clearly promising. He sustained that unflagging sense of focus through the strange tilt and lilt of Flynn’s melodic writing. And it was in the work’s most unrelentingly busy movement, the finale which the composer describes as an “epic reel which climbs gradually from the depths of anger to the heights of ecstasy”, that performer and work seemed most effectively aligned.

Flynn also wrote an orchestral accompaniment for a set by Hayes and his regular partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill. Cahill’s style is often spare in a way that’s suggestive rather than bald. He doesn’t try to tie amelodic line down, preferring to float separated chords as a gentle support. And he can also drive, when Hayes is in full flight, with the brio of a rhythm section.

Flynn’s orchestral writing neatly mirrored Cahill’smusical discretion.

The programme also included three memorials – Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in memoriam

Benjamin Britten and Fratres

(written in memory of fellow Estonian composer Eduard Tubin) and Flynn’s Music for the Departed, originally for the Hayes/Cahill duo with classical violin (Bróna Cahill), and performed on Wednesday with an added orchestral backing.

None of the three seemed to yield a fully satisfactory message on this occasion. The concert also included the first part of a traveloguish The Man from Maghera Rambles Through Africa, part of a thank-you suite for Hayes and Cahill that’s also intended as a showpiece for the RTÉCO.