Having sung at Killruddery and Castletown House some years ago, the German baritone Olaf Bar made his Dublin recital debut in the opening concert of the new season of NCH/Irish Times Celebrity Concerts last night.

As on his previous Irish visits, he stayed firmly in home territory, this time offering four Schubert settings by Seidl before a performance of Schwanengesang grouped ar ound the interval into settings by Heine and Rellstab. The posthumously-published Sch wanengesang (Swan song) was not actually conceived as a cycle, although that is how it was first presented by its publisher, and the ordering of the songs remains a challenge to modern-day performers.

Bar's solution was at its most effective in the Heine settings of the first half. His drained bleakness of tone in Am Meer was brought to a penetrating intensity for the consummation of longing in the final stanza.

Other memorable moments were the shift into the bursting bitterness of loss at the end of Die Stadt, the expression of the inescapable burden of longnurtured pain in Der Doppelganger - in many ways the climactic centre of the whole evening - and the churn of vehemently-expressed resentment in Der Atlas. Fonder and lighter feelings were handled demonstratively but in a way which seemed impersonal - acted out rather than lived through. This impression may have been exaggerated by tricks of the acoustic, which carried the force of the voice in full flight with ease, but had a distancing, muted effect in quieter moments.

Malcolm Martineau accompanied with his usual sense of tact and discretion.