The Hub, Dublin City University

Brandenburg Concerto No.3, BWY 1048 - Bach

Tangos: Pezzi de la Piazza - Piazzolla (arr.Lunyov)

Bachianas Brasileiras No.9 - Villa-Lobos

Cartoon - Eric Zoran

Sonata for Strings - Walton

The auditorium in the Hub, the new student centre in DCU, has nine rows of racked seats, holding 236 people, above a large expanse of floor. There is no stage or wings or proscenium: it could be a dance floor as readily as a theatrical space. The orchestra looked isolated, but the absence of any barrier against communication enabled it to envelop the audience in a warm cocoon of sound.

Bach's Brandenburg Concert No.3 features different groups of soloists in nicely varied ways and the ICO, as always, played with a welcome precision and a shared sense of purpose. The Brazilian Bach, Villa-Lobos, makes intriguing use of his predecessor's compositional techniques and the extra rhythmical complexities didn't cause the players any problems.

Dermot Dunne (accordion) has played Piazzolla before with great success. The addition of a string orchestra, in Svynatoslav Lungov's arrangement of six tangos, detracted from the Argentinian atmosphere, and gave Dunne rather too little to do. In the first movement - the "dramatic interpretation of Piazzolla in the style of contemporary music" - the orchestra and soloist seemed to inhibit rather than liberate each other.

Eric Zoran is a Professor of Composition and Orchestratoin in Belgrade. Cartoon is a meditative piece with intertwining lines and subtle sound effects, but the composer's addition of a harpsichord to the ensemble was puzzling, as most of the time it could not be heard. The title remains a puzzle also.

Walton's Sonata for Strings (originally the String Quartet in A minor) showed the ICO at its best. A sense of energetic movement enlivened the music's progress and only in the Lento did the original version seem preferable.