The Music in Great Irish Houses festival's second visit to Farmleigh House this year yielded a concert with a difference. For their performance of that "cycle of terrifying songs" (Schubert's own description of his Winterreise), the British duo of Philip Langridge and David Owen Norris had the use of a mid-19th-century piano, said to have been sold to an Irishman by none other than the pianist Clara Schumann.

Philip Langridge (tenor), David Owen Norris (fortepiano)

Farmleigh House

Michael Dervan

Winterreise ............................... Schubert

Clara's father, Friedrich Wieck, who so vehemently opposed her marriage to the composer Robert Schumann, was a man deeply involved in the world of the piano. His nephew, Wilhelm, was a piano maker, and it was an instrument from the firm of Wilhelm Wieck that made its way to Ireland over 150 years ago.

David Owen Norris, who is no stranger to 19th-century pianos, didn't always sound comfortable with the instrument. Achieving clarity of articulation in rapid figuration often sounded problematic, and he allowed bulging accumulations of sound in some of the passages with repeated chords. The piano tone was rounder than many instruments of the period that I've heard (some people may have found it on the dull side), and lyrical lines didn't seem to have been easy to shape.

Langridge and Owen Norris are an experienced team in this particular cycle, and their general approach was pointed, emotional and dramatic.

Langridge's delivery on Tuesday came across as somewhat polarised - the peaks in the phrasing tended to obscure the troughs, the emphatic accentuation disrupted the linear flow, and the feeling of forward movement too consistently longed for limited the reflectiveness of the experience that was being transmitted.

Owen Norris made a peculiar plea to the audience before the performance to pay less attention to the texts and translations printed in the programme and yield directly to the emotional journey itself. Both the point he was making and the performance which followed turned out to be part of an occasion where, unfortunately, more was less.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Cork Opera House

Mary Leland

The large cast in this Cork Opera House production is worked to unity of purpose and conviction by director Belinda Wild, for her production of this classic story by C.S. Lewis. This is the RSC version of the magical journey of four evacuee children who discover the land of Narnia while hiding in the eponymous piece of furniture.

John O'Donoghue's design for the other world combines atmosphere with effect, although his more prosaic sets are very busy and, despite the arrangement of doors, send a lot of action in and out through the wings. Paul Denby's lighting, too, is crucial to the impact, and David Gordon's arrangement of movement combines elegance with likelihood.

The quality of the performances is excellent in so many cases that even to single out Elaine Hearty's Lucy seems unfair to everyone else. The music - including some tuneful anthems and choruses - by John O'Brien stays incidental, a pleasant underscore for the action.

This is a story laden with metaphor, beginning with the children's status as visitors in a house to which they have been sent for their own safety and culminating in the character of Aslan (another unfair distinction, this time for Sidney Sloan's lion), his death as a sacrifice and his rather sudden resurrection.

It has a peculiarly English mysticism which needs to be lightly handled if it is to survive. It is impossible to tell how Belinda Wild meant to handle it, for this production from start to finish is bedevilled by sound control - or lack of it.

If the white witch herself (a majestic Eileen O'Sullivan with what may have been a lovely singing voice) had been at the sound desk she couldn't have made a better job of reducing everything on stage to a single impression of cacophony.

From Lucy's strident over-amplification, to the tooth-coring decibels of the major numbers, the director's intentions are eliminated by this technical dominance, and the final impression is one in which mysticism has been abandoned to mayhem.

Continues at the Cork Opera House until June 22nd. Booking: 021-454 3210/4270022