Three Songs on Poems of Robert Frost - Elliot Carter

Sacher Variations for solo cello - Witold Lutoslawski

"Les mots sont allees" for cello - Luciano Berio

Sonata for Violin and Piano - Janacek

Two Epithalamia for cello - Kevin O'Connell

Etude 2000 for piano - Kevin O'Connell

"O to Be a Dragon", Seven Songs on Poems of Marianne Moore - Kevin O'Connell

In the final concert of the Composers' Choice series, the audience in the NCH John Field Room last Wednesday night was gently led from the apprentice pastoralism of Carter's early songs to the savagely dramatic settings of Marianne Moore by O'Connell. The two works for solo cello that followed the Carter, by Lutoslawski and Berio, were comparatively mild examples of the sort of modernism that O'Connell espouses.

The next work, however, Janacek's passionate sonata, played by Michael d'Arcy (violin) and David Adams (piano), was an indication of the emotional charge that O'Connell hopes to make his music carry.

After the interval and before the composer's choice of his own works, he spoke severely of the musical pap that assails our ears in so many places and doesn't deserve to be listened to.

He was trying to redress the balance with a music that might be demanding on listeners and performers alike, but that would deserve concentrated attention. The rewards would be commensurate with the effort.

This ambition was realised in the complexities of the Etude 2000, played by David Adams. It was as if the pianist had three brains: one for each hand and a superbrain to control the first two. Here indeed was unity in diversity.

The Two Epithalamia for cello, played by Eckart Schwarz Shulz, were gentler and more lyrical than the Lutoslawski and the Berio, but inhabited a similar country.

The crown of the evening was the song cycle O to Be a Dragon. O'Connell has taken seven extremely rarefied poems by Marianne Moore that even after many readings are reluctant to yield their meaning, and matched them with equally difficult music. The result is a dramatic cantata, urgent and absorbing.

Conor Biggs (bass) gave a mesmerising performance, moving from speechlike song to songlike speech to pure song and all the wide variety of vocal gesture asked for by the composer.

As adept in this work as in the etude, David Adams conveyed total understanding of the music and, together with the singer, made it an engrossing experience.