David Shaferon Joan Baez at Vicar Street, Dublin and Michael Dunganon the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall

Joan Baez

Vicar Street, Dublin

THE WAY things go usually, a performer plays to an audience. But when folk music legend Joan Baez played Vicar Street on Friday night, that regime was occasionally upended.

This older audience - in knit scarves and berets and a few shawls - supplied Baez with rapturous support and also the lyrics to her songs when she forgot them.

But if that makes it sound as if Baez's performance was weak, let me rephrase: in return for helping her through the concert, a loving and supportive crowd saw a show that climbed steadily in musical and emotional intensity.

With no support act, Baez opened with Lily of the West, an old American folk song. Baez looked good, but sounded wobbly through her first few songs. Where was the woman with the three-octave vocal range? The protest singer who made grievance gorgeous?

After six songs, she introduced the members of her band - John Doyle on guitar and mandolin, Todd Philips on bass and Dirk Powell on banjo, fiddle and mandola. "This is my first concert of the tour," she said, "and my first concert with these lads."

And with that admission, it seemed, Vicar Street shrunk from packed venue to crowded coffee house and the gig became a sing-song. Baez found her incredible voice again and the audience got comfortable - and vocal. That's when she started to rip through them.

She used the Steve Earle song Christmas Time in Washington, with its refrain of "Come back Woodie Guthrie", to suggest that maybe America needs some of that old medicine back again. Next, Joe Hill roused and rallied the crowd. Later, some songs by and one about Bob Dylan.

A fan called for The Night they drove Old Dixie down. "Do you people really know that one?" she asked. They did.

Then, while tuning a guitar between songs in her encore, Baez mused aloud that she needed to get, "one of those people who brings guitars out on stage," but that that just seemed too complicated and fancy.

"I'll do that for you," called a voice from the back. Baez seemed genuinely charmed by the love in the room.

David Shafer

O'Conor, RTÉ NSO/Markson

NCH, Dublin

Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 25 in C. Bruckner - Symphony No. 7

ONE OF the great successes of Gerhard Markson's eight-year tenure as principal conductor with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra was his complete cycle of Bruckner symphonies in the 2002-2003 season.

It was therefore fitting and welcome that the selection of personal favourites punctuating Markson's final season should include Bruckner's Symphony No 7. Although long at over an hour, the seventh is less incessant and gigantic than some of the others.

It builds primarily towards a single climax in the final movement and is relatively understated - a perfect match to the measured approach that Markson applied in his earlier cycle and here revisited in this concert.

The majestic, intense allegro that opens the symphony and the ensuing slow movement together make for a monumental pairing through which Markson sustained a strong sense of direction.

In music that risks seeming rather loose in its tangential forays, there was here an impression of narrative, of continuously answering the question, 'and then what happened?'.

The respite provided by the light-spirited scherzo then set the stage for the climactic finale featuring a fine mix of power and polish from the expanded brass section which shone throughout.

The stylistic fingerprints Markson leaves on his Bruckner were also very much in evidence in his big-boned account of Mozart's C major Piano Concerto No. 25.

In this, he was gamely matched by soloist John O'Conor and between them they ensured the dialogue between piano and orchestra was always balanced as well as lively. Going for a big canvas meant forgoing some of the potential for chamber music intimacy in the slow movement, yet it also seemed to underline the anticipation of Beethoven that is a feature of this concerto.

O'Conor was in top form, being notably crisp and bright in the cheeky rondo - a nice way to round off an evening that began with the weight and seriousness of Bruckner.

Michael Dungan