The keywords in Donnacha Dennehy's note for his first National Symphony Orchestra commission, The Vandal, are conveniently highlighted in italics: "vandalism" and "contamination". He has also used the phrase "virus technique" to describe the process he uses and has linked it into a broader world-view with the statement "life is basically about rotting". However, The Vandal, premiered at the NCH last Friday, seemed on a first hearing less remarkable for any particular innovations of process than for its affinity to the sound world of another Irish composer, Gerald Barry. The connection is so clear as to be unmissable.

However, Dennehy's gestural world in The Vandal seems rather too narrow, with too many of the orchestral texturings seeming richer on paper (or perhaps sounding better in MIDI renditions from the computer score) than they do in orchestral reality. The frequent rocketing rhythm of that reality seemed seriously compromised by the smudged finishes of the NSO's playing under Alexander Anissimov. Dennehy left his best and most haunting effect to the very end. If there's more of that quality to be mined from the work in a more sympathetic performance, it should be well worth revisiting.

Finghin Collins played Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto on one of Yamaha's strong-toned, bright-voiced instruments. I don't think I've heard a more consistently dazzling display from Collins either in concerto or recital.

There was brilliance, too, in Anissimov's account of Dvorak's Eighth Symphony. The projection was strong and the coloration vivid. On the other hand, there were still too many of those unnecessary masking effects through which accompaniments come to drown the lines they're accompanying.