Collins, Cór na nÓg

NCH, Dublin

The third of this year’s RTÉ Horizons concerts generated a memorably bright and upbeat atmosphere. To be sure, featured composer Elaine Agnew’s selection of contemporary works took in some challenging enough listening; what made it specially engaging, though, was the range of colour and the zestful delivery.

In his dual role of limber conductor and unceremonious compère, David Brophy found time for pithy yet insightful interviews on the creative and performative processes with the composer and with solo pianist Finghin Collins.

Agnew's programme had assigned some doughtily virtuosic items to Collins, which he brought off in heroic style. Stephen Gardner's heavy-duty tonescape The Shipyard(2002) tackled its Belfast subject with some of the grittier resources of mainstream modernism, while three of the Displaced Dances(2000) by Soviet-born Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin sugared a pill of grim realism with foot-tapping appeal.

Kats-Chernin has become Agnew's guiding spirit in recent years, and that might partly explain the eclectic approachability of Make a Wish, which Agnew composed last year to mark the 10th anniversary of RTÉ Lyric FM.

This work may be predicated on innocent thoughts of birthday cake, but more complex elements emerge from the systematic tonal language, the well proportioned melodies and figurations, and the effective, economical orchestration.

Two further pieces of Agnew’s both dated from 2000, yet offered such stylistic contrasts that each might have been taken for the work of a different composer.

Owing its origins to an educational project with Charlotte Cory at Mercy Primary School, Belfast, the pervasively diatonic Wait and See (2000) proved a tour de force of memorisation and sustained accuracy for the buoyant young voices of RTÉ Cór na nÓg.

And with Straight to the Point(2000), Brophy's reading happily brought out a fierce individuality in the score.