Irish Times writers review The Go-Betweens at the Ambassador in Dublin and Juliet Welchman  and the Irish Chamber Orchestra/Hunkaat IMMA in  Dublin.

The Go-Betweens

Ambassador, Dublin

Siobhán Long

The Go-Betweens live are like a sally around Slea Head: there are as many hairpin bends and U-turns on stage

as on that tip of the Dingle peninsula, and the adrenaline rush is formidable, whether you're hanging from the

rafters of the Ambassador or

brushing up your rallying skills around Dunquin.

Robert Forster and Grant (or GW, as he preferred during his solo career) McLennan are still the quintessential oddball duo, 25 years on from their debut, Lee Remick.

Both have aged tantalisingly well, their most recent album, Bright Yellow Bright Orange, a muscular mix of acoustic love songs honed with pin-prick sensitivity and pensive snapshots of what might have been - without the anger that might lumber a lesser band not known for their swag of top-ten

hits.

Dublin is not used to hosting the second night of a tour: most bands

lazily leave us to the end of their itineraries, when they're tired,

emotional and lacking in patience, humour or even much of a regard for the

audience.

With only one previous gig (in Glasgow) under their belts, Forster and McLennan launched into a flurry of new material and old favourites with the energy and appetites of musicians in need of the spotlight after too long in the wings. Adele Pickvance's magnificently louche guitar lines and equally pristine backing vocals lent shape and

substance to what was already a tight

set piece.

Old favourites such as The House That Jack Kerouac Built shimmied cheekily alongside younger siblings from their latest offering, including Caroline And I and Old Mexico.

In between, Forster took the reins on vocals, giving McLennan due credit for his songwriting talents, while McLennan occasionally made a foray to the front lines.

Their joint delivery of Spring Rain

was an effervescent reminder of

how far The Go-Betweens have pushed pop out of its colour-by-numbers

box.

Three encores and a numerous songs later they left us, mouths agape, appetites sated - and fuelled for another few years until they decide to do it all over again.

Long may the Brisbane sun shine on them both.

Juliet Welchman, Irish Chamber Orchestra/Hunka

IMMA, Dublin

Review by Michael Dervan

Simple Symphony - Britten. Cello Concerto In C - Haydn. Nocturne, The Moon - Elaine Agnew. Serenade For Strings - Dvorák

What, you might ask, is Haydn's Cello Concerto In C doing in an all-strings programme? The Irish Chamber Orchestra has done this sort of thing in the past, dropping wind parts from Mozart concertos where the composer had taken account of windless performances, as well as from ones where he hadn't. The omission of wind from the Haydn might be taken as a form of silent protest against the severe cut in the orchestra's 2003 Arts Council grant.

The sound of the Haydn concerto was on the bare side without its pairs of oboes and horns, and the broader contrast the composer planned in the strings-only central adagio went by the board when the whole work featured nothing but strings. But the soloist, Juliet Welchman, the orchestra's principal cellist, showed a lively and sympathetic response to the music, and her approach was clear in both tone and gesture.

The concert was directed from the violin by the orchestra's leader, Katherine Hunka, who launched at Britten's Simple Symphony in a robust, even forceful manner but then scaled back the intensity for the Haydn.

The opening movements of Dvorák's Serenade For Strings captured beautifully the loveliness of this most attractive of late-19th-century string works, but the pressure mounted as the work progressed and at times came to seem rather too intense.

The finest playing came in Elaine Agnew's The Moon, a response to W. B. Yeats's The Song Of Wandering Aengus. Agnew's atmospheric piece is built of what are made to seem like freely wandering lines, captured in delicate hues and half-tones. The orchestra made the most of the opportunity to explore a quiet realm that most of the rest of the music-making had steered away from.

Tours to Monaghan, today, Kinsale, tomorrow, and Waterford, Thursday