Silenzio - Sofia Gubaidulina

Giles - Deirdre Gribbin

Symphony for Five - John Kinsella

Concorde's lunchtime concert in the National Concert Hall's John Field Room last Friday included two works from Ireland and one by a composer from the former Soviet Union. Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) wrote Silenzio in 1991, and for this performance two of Concorde's regulars, Alan Smale (violin) and David James (cello), were joined by the virtuoso accordion player Dermot Dunne. Silenzio's five movements, all predominantly quiet and slow, call for subtle shifts of colour and volume, often at extreme pitches. Sounds emerge from stillness, and slowly acquire rhythmic and motivic characteristics. Change is constant. I sometimes felt that the string sounds needed more contrast of colour, but nevertheless found the performance absorbing. This music has character!

Madeleine Staunton played Giles, a solo-flute piece written in 1989 by Belfast-born Deirdre Gribbin, who was then in her early 20s. Gribbin has since gone on to much bigger and better things, but this short piece - inspired by Watteau's famous portrait of a clown - is clearly the work of someone who has ideas and knows how to carry them through.

The concert ended with Symphony for Five by John Kinsella. Commissioned by Concorde and premiered in 1996, this three-movement piece is based on one of the composer's favourite Classical symphonies. (He would not say which one, but my money was on Schubert's Ninth). Well-crafted, obviously enjoyable to play, and light-hearted without being trivial, it transforms snippets of material into ostinato rhythms and other benign parodies of that period's style. It is scored for flute, clarinet (Paul Roe), violin, cello and percussion (Richard O'Donnell), and the performers captured its characteristics rather well.