{TABLE} Skyshapes (1994) ............................. Eibhlis Farrell Strange Fish (1994) .......................... Stephen Gardner Wings (1951) ................................. Joan Tower Amazon 1 (1977) .............................. Joan Tower {/TABLE} THE most useful aspect of suggestive titles is that they are easier to remember than non committal terms like Piece or Study or Sonata, but it is not always easy to relate image to music. Eibhlis Farrell's Skyshapes for solo flute, completely removed as it was from Debussyan pastoral, was hard to relate to its title and, for a solo piece, was rather short on melodic interest.

Stephen Gardner says that the title Strange Fish "refers to nothing in particular a welcome frankness. His work for alto flute, violin, cello, piano and percussion contrasts passages of romantic richness with extensive rhythmically obsessive episodes stylistically, it swings from Rachmaninov to Stravinsky, but it falls short of welding the two extremes into a coherent whole.

Joan Tower's Wings, for clarinet solo, made good use of the high, deep and middle registers of the clarinet, giving the impression that three instruments were involved. The player, Paul Roe, skillfully brought the piece to life, maintaining a sense of movement and tension from beginning to end.

Joan Tower's Amazon with its placid opening and increasing turbulence, could be said to move upstream, and when flute, clarinet, violin, piano and cello seemed to struggle for dominance it could have been a cataract in the Andes. Unfortunately, like most rivers, there were stretches when nothing much seemed to happen. One would have welcomed a strange fish or two, which might, have brought this Sunday recital in the Lane Gallery to a more exciting conclusion.