Irish Times writers review the Early Music Festival in Galway, the NSO/Libor Pesek at the National Concert Hall and Lambchop at the Olympia.

EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL, GALWAY

The organisers of the Galway Early Music Festival wanted to begin on a high note, they could scarcely have done better than Thursday night's opening concert.

In the spacious yet intimate St Nicholas's Collegiate Church, Camerata Kilkenny presented a perfectly designed programme of French, German and English music, composed between 1680 and 1730.

For this concert the membership of Camerata Kilkenny - Malcolm Proud (harpsichord), Maya Homburger (baroque violin), Sarah Cunningham (bass viol) and John Elwes (tenor) - was augmented. Sarah Moffat is one of that handful of young Irish violinists who represent the future of historical performance in this country. Julia Dickson is a recent arrival. One would hope she stays, for she produced some of the most natural shaping and beautifully toned playing I have ever heard on baroque flute.

It was a rare treat to hear, in one concert, so much unfamiliar music of such high quality.

The first work was an astonishingly florid sacred concerto by Bruhns, and the last a cantata by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, which epitomises the high qualities of French-baroque, literary-minded classicism. Between these stylistic poles came superb sonatas by Bach, Handel and Purcell, an extraordinarily subtle suite by the viol-king Marais, and a collection of definitively French character pieces by Rameau.

This was one of those cherishable occasions when the music lived through the personalities of the performers and the group, while those personalities were subordinate to the individuality of each work. The instrumental lines were full of energy, distinct yet complementary; and the singing of tenor John Elwes made the texts and music of the Bruhns and Clérambault as fresh and close-knit as if written yesterday. A gem of a concert!

High professionalism was on display on Friday night too. With the seating in St Nicholas's Church arranged in the round, the pleasantly costumed French group, Compagnie Maître Guillaume, presented 75 minutes of dance and music from the courts of Spain, France and Italy in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

The fine playing of the four instrumentalists was impeccably co-ordinated with the nimble dancers, two of whom devised much of the choreography through drawing on contemporary dance treatises.

Studying historical performance tells us little more than what things might have been like. Compagnie Maître Guillaume typify the best aspects of contemporary French practice in early music: like Les Arts Florissants, they turn uncertainty into an opportunity. Those who argue for hard evidence might cavil; but imagination, and communicative, seemingly spontaneous presentation make you fancy that it was like this.

Persuasion in the face of uncertainty was a feature of Bill Taylor's lecture-recital on the ancient harp music of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This specialist in historical instruments was an urbane buccaneer in the way he made imperfectly understood sources seem like certainties. And he lost none of those endearing qualities when he moved on to later, more familiar sources.

Late that night, the Dublin-based group Seanma presented a programme ranging from the 11th to the early 16th century. It placed some of the few written examples of ancient Irish music in the context of contemporary continental and English music. The comparisons were revealing; and while the performances were inclined towards gentility, they helped create a striking atmosphere in the candle-light of the Augustinian church.

Having to leave early on Saturday meant that I missed the city-centre parade and the concert by Musica Antiqua London - a promising programme of music by and about the French and English kings Francis I and Henry VIII. The festival was to be rounded off on Sunday with a performance of Tallis's 40-part motet, Spem in alium, by 80 singers assembled from many parts of Ireland and Britain.

With its mix of the events described, plus other lectures, workshops in schools and exhibitions, the Galway Early Music Festival packs quite a lot into four days. In any community-based event of this kind, it is inevitable that standards will vary. But amateur involvement is one of the mainsprings, and the way this year's festival was put together showed how the highest professional standards can inspire others, and build a store for the future.

Reviewed by Martin Adams

NSO/LIBOR PESEK, NCH

It's just over ten years since Libor Pesek first conducted at the National Concert Hall, when the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra made their debut there in 1991. The all-Dvorák programme he conducted on that occasion was notable for the chamber-music-like intimacy of the playing.

By contrast, his handling of five of the same composer's Slavonic Dances, with the National Symphony Orchestra on Friday, was anything but subtle.

The excitement was noisy, the colouring splashy, and the orchestral balances crude.

Happily, Pesek and the players settled into a mode of more responsive refinement for the major work of the evening, the six symphonic poems that make up Smetana's great essay in patriotic tone-painting, Má Vlast (My Country). The best-known of these is the river portrait, Vltava (usually referred to in English by its German name, The Moldau), but the other works in the series include much striking music, not least the opening poem, Vysehrad, depicting a bardic re-telling of the events that took place on that prominent rock on the outskirts of Prague, with the composer's initials ciphered into the first chords of the atmospheric opening for two harps.

Conductor and orchestra responded with lyric and dramatic fluency to this heart-felt music. After the Dvorák, it was as if a veil had lifted, so that what was blurred came into focus, and the sort of expressive detail that had been simply lost in the first half came to be heard clearly in the second. This cycle is not often heard in its entirety. Pesek's loving account was an apt reminder of why it still retains a special hold on audiences' affections.

Reviewed by Michael Dervan

LAMBCHOP, THE OLYMPIA

Inside the huge band Lambchop, there are two or three smaller bands struggling to get out. Packed with Kurt Wagner's touring 12-piece, the stage of the Olympia assumed the appearance of a crowded office, Wagner occupying a centre stage swivel chair, with other musicians confined to their own partitions. The problem is that, despite some understated beauty, they seemed ripe for downsizing. Two years ago, Lambchop's breakthrough album, Nixon, catapulted the Nashville consortium from obscurity, with its modestly lush arrangements of chamber pop and country soul. Wagner's follow-up, this year's Is A Woman, is a much more sparse affair. That's certainly no crime, but in its performance, several musicians appear idle. One wonders what five guitarists achieve that three couldn't. Or what twined bassists and percussionists add to the pillow-muted sound.

The last concert of a seven-week international tour left the company as ceremonially jovial as a dress-down Friday. Between the musically unadorned late-night introspection of The Daily Growl and the bittersweet weary of My Blue Wave, light jibes among the musicians appeared like a bonding session on an alt.country getaway. The emotion of Wagner's brittle voice and downbeat lyrics were largely drowned out by identical patterns of undulating electronics, triggered by Jonathan Marx, a man as young and strait-laced as the ex-CEO of a failed dotcom. With crowd favourite Up With People, the energetic release among the band was palpable. D Scott Parsley boasted a similar escape, gathering momentum until every member of the group let rip, proving their worth.

Reviewed by Peter Crawley