{TABLE} Elegiac Arabesque.......................... Oliver Knussen Serenade for Double Bass................... Hans Werner Henze (arr. Drew) Oi Kuu..................................... Kaija Saariaho Trio for piano clarinet and cello.......... Anthony Powers Quintet.................................... Gerald Barry {/TABLE} FRIDAY's lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall's John Field Room featured an attractive programme within the spasmodic Music Now series. The oldest piece was Henze's Serenade for Double Bass, written for cello in the late 1940s, and arranged for double bass by Lucas Drew. The rhythmic life of Malachy Robinson's playing was one of the concert's strengths, and his unassuming virtuosity captured neatly the music's ponderous humour.
Everything else played by Music `97 (as the players were billed) was written within the last 12 years, and for various scorings of cor anglais (Matthew Manning), clarinets .(Fintan Sutton), piano (Alison Thomas) and cello (Aisling Drury-Byrne); plus double bass for Gerald Barry's Quintet (1994), which was receiving its first performance in Ireland. There was some well-coloured and technically assured playing but, except in the Barry, it fell short of reaching out and persuading, largely because of rhythmic limitations.
In the precise dialogue of Oliver Knussen's Elegiac Arabesques (cor anglais and clarinet), and in the sonorous explorations of Oi Kuu (bass clarinet and cello) by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, events just happened in the right place, with little tension between the instruments. Most of Anthony Powers's Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello seemed motionless.
What a contrast Barry's Quintet made, and not just because of the performance. The music teases one's expectations. It startles, via juxtapositions which made the other music on the programme seem conventional, even tame. Its energy - well conveyed in this performance - is rivetting; and its forceful yet subtle mix of new material and reworking shows a sure sense of form. No wonder there were smiles all round as the audience left.
