{TABLE} Sonata...............................Martinu Sonata in A..........................Faure Suite................................Widor Carnival of Venice...................Briccialdi Airs Valaques........................Doppler {/TABLE} JAMES Galway's appearance at the National Concert Hall last night was given as part of the celebrations surrounding the centenary of Dublin's Eye and Ear Hospital. It may be that it was the special-interest audience that such an event can be expected to attract which led the performer to his particular choice of music, but it seemed odd to me to recycle so many works from his last two recital appearances in Dublin, leaving Briccialdi's Carnival of Venice as the only new work.

Galway, of course, is a flautist in a class of his own, unmistakable in tone (with a vibrato of almost piercing sweetness) and in style of delivery. The strengths of the style are those of brilliance and sustained intensity. The playing tends towards an evenness which limits its range of lyrical expression and there's a pattern to the delay-on-the-down-beat which, is often restricting of rhythmic spring.

The performer professes a soft spot for the slow movement of Martinu's Flute Sonata, and it showed in the quality of his performance. Faure's Violin Sonata in A, however, does not shine as a result of the transition to the flute, and not even a player of Galway's resources can manage to invest much character into Widor's watery, melodically undistinguished Suite.

The most florid moments of the Widor gave an accurate foretaste of the high jinks that were to follow in the Briccialdi and Doppler, showpieces where effect is all and substance nothing. Galway played them as though they had been written specifically for him.