Jardin Secret 1 (1984-85) - Kaija

Saariaho String Quartet no.3 (1969) - Brian Boydell

Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky (1971) - Schnittke

String Quartet (1998) - Benjamin Dwyer

The three string quartets in Sunday's recital in the Lane Gallery were preceded by a work for computer-generated tape. Jardin Secret 1 by Saariaho is a prolonged drone which carries like a stream, both above and below the surface, a lot of floating material: it might be bells, harps, voices, cymbals, strings or drums. The fleeting sounds pass and pile up against a dam, overflow and plunge in a cataract from which emerges a strongly rhythmic figure and the work ends.

Boydell's String Quartet 3 has a different approach. The interest is not in the carrying capacity of the stream, but in the ways in which the flotsam can be turned into melody, broken up and recombined. It reminds one at times of Bartok: it is in the same tradition. Michael d'Arcy with the Hibernia String Trio sounded like a string quartet of standing and played the work with a strong sense of urgency.

Schnittke's Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky is a work of long notes but short duration, whose doleful harmonies are suitably elegiacal. The general impression is static but the players contrived to give an illusion of motion.

Benjamin Dwyer's String Quartet (1998) immediately grips the attention and continues to do so throughout its three movements. It's almost as if the composer were afraid that any relaxation of tension would lose him his audience. The continued forcefulness brings diminishing returns and hinders not only music's seductive potential but also its building up to a climax. There were passages which, unexpectedly, sounded like Saariaho, others with a hint of minimalism; they were all presented with great vigour by the players and the composer must have been pleased by the performance, which seemed completely at home in his idiom.