For much of the 20th century, those American composers who resisted atonality were marginalised by the UK's musical establishment - one of the pillars of which is the BBC, the presenter of this free invitation concert.
Ulster Orchestra/ Rumon Gamba
Ulster Hall, Belfast
Music for the Theatre..................................Copland
Three orchestral songs...................................Barber Music for radio (Prairie Journal)...............Copland Variations on America....................................... Ives Knoxville: Summer of 1915...........................Barber
Fancy Free................................................Bernstein
Since then, the pendulum has swung the other way, and one sometimes feels the same composers are now being over-promoted.
Just as a fear of seeming reactionary once protected John Cage, fear of seeming hidebound now protects a great deal of mediocre music in overtly populist styles.
A few passages of pastiche Copland apart, there is little in its basic material to distinguish the Bernstein ballet from the masses of music churned out contemporaneously for Broadway musicals and animated cartoons.
One wearied too of the diatonic wholesomeness of Copland's Prairie Journal, written for radio in 1937; the retrogressive impressionism of the Barber songs (completed in 1943, the same year as the Bernstein), and the string-drenched nostalgia of his Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
Imaginative vocal writing in this piece allowed the soprano, Joan Rodgers, to show off her lovely high notes, but it was hard to make out any words.
Copland's 1925 Music for the Theatre spices up its rather variable material with astringent harmonies, but the one piece in this programme with any real vitality was Ives's outrageous variations on the well-known patriotic song, America, written for organ as long ago as 1892 and orchestrated by the composer, William Schuman, in 1963. It was played with efficiency and zest by the Ulster Orchestra under Rumon Gamba. - Dermot Gault
Márta Sebestyen
Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures
Marta Sebestyen's raison d'être is to make "honest music". Partnered by her long-time co-conspirators, Vujicsics (fellow Hungarians with a similarly voracious appetite for unadulterated folk music), Sebestyen set a dangerous precedent in seductive chant that stilled not only the front and back pews, but those who hung on to her every breath and syllable in the choir galleries too.
Sebestyen and Vujicsics are to Hungarian music what Utah Phillips and Ani di Franco are to American folk, and Martin Hayes and Dervish are to our own feisty brew. Far from boxing the tradition in bubble wrap, all of these players twist it and turn it, airing it afresh with each performance, inhaling it deep into their subconscious and at the same time ensuring that the music inhabits 2002 with the same immediacy that it probably did every decade of the last century.
Fuel to Vujicsics's fire is the Serb and Croat musical tradition of south Hungary, scaffolded by a trio of tamburas (close relatives of the classical guitar, at a guess), and, of course, Sebestyen's remarkable repertoire of native songs.
Mihály Borbély, set the pace, expertly swapping saxophone for shepherd's pipe, tambura and Hungarian clarinet, and casting wry sidelong glances at his rapt audience - just to make sure they weren't missing anything. If this music could be corralled, it would soar high on the back of a Romany-inspired high-spiritedness mixed with a tincture of Turkish snake-charming skills.
Of course, it was Sebestyen's vocal cords that ultimately stilled the punters. Shifting from erotic earthiness to divine inspiration, her vocal range engulfed upper and lower registers with equal ease, and with quiet aplomb. Budapest may have given her voice first flight, but she's evidently scoured the hills and caverns of the entire country to unearth the eclectic repertoire she holds so dear. At times, parallels with our own lilting and sean-nós tradition were inevitably drawn, folk music having taken flight long before passport officers sought to curb its itinerary.
The setting could have rendered the night sterile, the audience petrified by the sheer alien qualities of the music, and the saint-like status of Sebestyen. Instead, the mood was as celebratory and as informal as a post-All-Ireland semi-final knees-up - well, almost.- Siobhan Long
