Irish Times reviewers listen to performances from James Bowman in Cork and David Connolly in Dublin.

Bowman, Avison Ensemble/ Beznosiuk

East Cork Early Music Festival

The fourth East Cork Early Music Festival opened at St Fin Barre's Cathedral on Wednesday with a rare Irish appearance by counter-tenor James Bowman.

Bowman, now in his mid-60s, is what you would have to call a living legend, one of those performers who not only rose to prominence but achieved a kind of dominance in the first full flowering of what was originally and misleadingly called authentic performance practice.

His voice has a power and strength which suggest he must have been gifted with, as it were, a gear or two more than most of his colleagues. And he's also one of those performers who visibly lives what he sings. His immersion in the music, his involvement with his fellow musicians, and his concern to reach and stir his audience seem total.

In Wednesday's concert with Newcastle's Avison Ensemble, he sang two deeply stirring, harmonically arresting pieces by members of the Bach family - Johann Sebastian's Cantata No 54, Widerstehe doch der Sünde (Hold thou firm against all evil) and the little-known Heinrich's Ach, das ich Wassers gnug hätte (O, had I but tears enough) - and Buxtehude's penetratingly extrovert Jubilate Deo.

His voice sounded in remarkably good shape, more comfortable when under pressure than when more relaxed, more secure in higher-lying passages than in lower ones. Bowman is a very physically mobile performer, sometimes traversing through almost 180 degrees as he transfers his immediate attention from audience to on-stage players (listeners to Lyric FM's transmission of the concert, beware!). But his movements seemed to be entirely positive in outcome, as he wove patterns that everyone, players and listeners alike, seemed to find mesmerising.

It was interesting that the playing of the Avison Ensemble tightened and clarified when Bowman was on stage. The playing in three Vivaldi concertos sounded rather too thin, and Bach's Sixth Brandenburg Concerto was unduly dominated by the sound of Pavlo Beznosiuk, who was directing from the first viola. It was unusual to hear this astonishing, bass-rich piece (it has no violin parts at all) so consistently dominated by the top line. - Michael Dervan

• The East Cork Early Music Festival continues until Sun.

David Connolly (organ)

Pro-Cathedral, Dublin

Vierne - Symphony No 2

Single movements from Vierne's six organ symphonies, which were written at fairly regular intervals between 1898 and 1930, are regular items in recitals. Their success as such can make one forget just how well-designed and effective the complete symphonies can be, especially when heard on an instrument so suited to this repertoire as the Pro-Cathedral's.

In the first of the annual September recitals, David Connolly gave a reliable and understanding account of the Symphony

No 2. It was his last performance as the Pro-Cathedral's senior organ scholar before he succeeds Anne Leahy as organist at St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire.

His playing enabled one to sit back without serious worries about technical or interpretative matters, and enjoy music by the composer-player who, surely, was the best composer among the many distinguished French organists after Franck.

More than most of the symphonies, this five-movement work wears its debt to Franck on its sleeve. It was written in 1902 and 1903, and the debt can be heard in the character of its ideas, especially in the outer movements, and in the cyclic techniques and methods of sustaining momentum through sequential repetition and variation.

Connolly showed every sign of understanding how to exploit this music's characteristics. His technique proved sufficiently sound and he drove sequences forward towards their goal. Although details were sometimes a bit splashy and the Scherzo did not hit the right level of deft fleet-footedness, this was an enjoyable performance of a demanding work. - Martin Adams