A look at what is going on in the world of the arts.

Trad Woman

Whelan's, Dublin

First nights must be forgiven for being ropey betimes. Slated as the first of a series on women in traditional music, Sunday night's revelries in Whelan's consisted of a handful of sublime moments and a flabby mêlée of instruments vying for space.

Áine Furey wears her lineage lightly. Bearing only the slightest resemblance to her piper father, Finbar, she possesses a voice that's all her own, balancing an earthy, primal quality on the one hand with a fragile, nervous tension on the other. Her time with Bohinta has served her well, in that she has forged an unmistakeable vocal identity, yet her on-stage diffidence hints at a singer more at home in a singing circle than on a podium.

Niamh Parsons' voice has always set her apart from most of her peers, its belly-deep sigh lending the slightest of ditties a gravitas, and her unapologetic joy in the act of singing a reminder of the way in which stories can buoy the spirit like nothing else.

Accompanied by her regular compadre Graham Dunne on guitar, she revelled in a glorious reading of An Páistín Fionn, and delighted in reinventing Black Is The Colour, replete with a jazz line that suited it well.

Siobhán Warfield, the night's MC, fronted her band, Gael Slí, with a feisty confidence that whispered of years of experience. Her harp and piano accordion struggled for position alongside Adrian Hart's superb fiddle, Dave Keegan's subtle percussion and Robin Hurt's guitar, and her vocals shifted awkwardly between a fine folk reading of Ewan McColl's The Ballad Of Tim Evans and a curious Shania Twain-esque take on My Ain True Love.

Sandy Denny's Maddy Groves suffered most at the hands of Gael Slí, its tale of tragedy bowdlerised by their sledgehammer arrangements and blithe indifference to the story's lyrical strength. The song has always borne close kinship to Planxty's Little Musgrave, but such lineage was nowhere to be seen amid the calcified skeleton that was laid bare by Gael Slí.

Warfield's undoubted charisma and organisational skills hint at a future for this showcase of women with an appetite for the tradition.

Next time out, with a tincture of restraint and a whole lot more honing of her own vocal identity, she might manage to strike a note that's all her own.

Siobhán Long

Murray, Lester, RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet

NCH John Field Room, Dublin

Boccherini - Stabat Mater

Schubert - String Quintet in C D956

The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet's first tour of the new year, which ended in Dublin on Sunday, saw them working with two guests, soprano Ann Murray and cellist Richard Lester. The opening work of their programme, Boccherini's Stabat Mater for soprano and strings, dates from 1781, and is also known in a later and larger version trebling the number of soloists. The composer, it appears, had concerns about the monotony of a single voice and the likelihood of fatigue for the singer.

From the audience's point of view, there were no such worries at Sunday's performance. Indeed, if anything, Ann Murray's dramatic instincts encouraged her to bring a range of expression to the music that was at times wider than it could bear.

The most-loved of 18th-century Stabat Maters is Pergolesi's, and it's hard not to suspect it had some lingering influence on Boccherini's much later work. Boccherini's setting has a paler, more delicate beauty and, for all its evident attractions, it's not hard to see why it has been eclipsed by Pergolesi's more strongly characterised writing.

Individuality of character is abundant in Schubert's great String Quintet. The Vanbrughs were often exquisite in the way they turned inward in the quietest moments. Leader Gregory Ellis's handling of the quicksilver writing of the finale was a miracle of dexterity. The limitations of the performance were in the whiplash accentuation of the Scherzo and in the more stressed climaxes of the first movement, where the effort exerted seemed of a much higher order than the expressive yield.

This, of course, is partly to do with the difficulties of the performing space. It has always seemed a pity that the Vanbrughs have ended up giving their Dublin concerts in the unsympathetically dry acoustic of the John Field Room.

It is a sad reflection on high-income Ireland that we find ourselves, in the first decade of the 21st century, without an adequately-resourced small- to medium-sized concert venue in the capital to host groups such as the Vanbrughs.

Michael Dervan