String Factory: Sometimes it rains - Ed Bennet

Continuum for bass-clarinet & tape - Rob Canning

Relentless (1996) for violin and piano - Grainne Mulvey

Flux, for piano - Simon Mawhinney

Crossing the Threshold - Michael Alcorn

In Sunday's recital of music by contemporary Irish composers in the Hugh Lane Gallery, only Mulvey and Mawhinney avoided the use of tape, though the hectic sound-world they created was probably influenced by electronic techniques. Mawhinney has spoken of a lack of communication between "acoustic" and "electronic" modes, and the works performed could be viewed as attempts to bridge that gap. The two works by Bennet, both for violin and tape, had a coherence that stemmed from the use of the same instrument and player in both parts.

Continuum mixed the sounds of bass-clarinet and Tibetan bowls on its tape; it is part of a series where Canning seeks to merge shapes and sounds, but where the eye has little to feed on and the ear cannot make up the deficiency. Alcorn's Crossing the Threshold (for violin and live electronics) made the most adventurous use of tape, and indeed of the violin, as they sought to outdo each other in transgressing conventionality.

The instrumentalists performed with the utmost virtuosity, quite overshadowing the tapes. When anything is possible, electronically speaking, why is it that the sounds produced on the tapes lack not only the attraction of physical presence but also the beauty of the pure instrumental sound? Is technology lagging behind?

For my part it was the untaped, unamplified works by Mulvey and Mawhinney that stood out as musical sound, despite the marked violence of both.