Owing to a comparatively tiny repertory, string trio playing is more of a part-time activity than quartet playing.

Beethoven - Trio in D Op 9 No 2, Volker David Kirchner - Trio, Mozart - Divertimento in E flat K563

Yet though the members of Trio Echnaton are principally employed in the Berlin Philharmonic and Bamberg Symphony orchestras, they sound like an ensemble that keeps constant company.

Wolfram Brandl (violin) and Sebastian Krunnies (viola) matched their sounds with such care that the instruments were sometimes hard to tell apart. Their seamless interplay was supported by Frank-Michael Guthmann (cello), who integrated with diligence and discretion.

Special bowing and finger effects abounded in the frosty piece composed for these musicians by Volker David Kirchner, himself a seasoned violist and trio player. Its scratches, scrapes, and smaller than normal intervals all felt purposeful.

All three movements also combined drawn-out, minor-key harmonies with some conventional chromaticism, but each was characterised by its own degree of expressionistic disruption.

Beethoven seems to have essayed the string trio medium because it challenged his deftness; Mozart because it offered enhanced prominence to his own instrument, the viola. Indeed, the six-movement Divertimento is his longest piece of chamber music.

Both composers' works were played with a precision that was more than just technical, it was emotional too. Melodies were expressive but never indulgent, accompaniments were involved but never studied, accentuations were emphatic but never over-exaggerated.

The smallest of hesitations and caesuras served the phrasing without being noticeable in themselves, the dynamic range was broad, the intonation secure.

It all showed that three string players can have the advantage of four, one violin the advantage of two. - Andrew Johnstone

Dún Laoghaire Choral Society, OSC/Garvey - NCH, Dublin

Mendelssohn - Hebrides Overture

Stanford - Songs of the Fleet

Vaughan Williams - A Sea Symphony

The music of Ralph Vaughan Williams conforms to pattern when it comes to popularity at home and abroad. It's heard a lot more frequently in Britain than elsewhere. And, within Ireland, performances of the composer's symphonies - he wrote nine in all - are far more frequent in Belfast than in Dublin.

Vaughan Williams's teacher, Dubliner Charles Villiers Stanford, may never have lost his brogue, but, even in his home town, his rating by promoters and audiences remains that of a minor British figure rather than a major Irish one.

The National Concert Hall programme from the Dún Laoghaire Choral Society and the Orchestra of St Cecilia enterprisingly featured rarely-heard, sea-related works from the two men. Vaughan Williams's Sea symphony sets texts by Walt Whitman, mostly from Leaves of Grass. Stanford's Songs of the Fleet sets words in the inflated, Britain-rules-the-waves spirit that Henry Newbolt made his own.

The shortest, best and best-known work of the evening, Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture, may be by a German, but it also has a British connection. It was sparked by the visit to Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides that he made in 1829 at the age of 20.

Conductor Cathal Garvey's approach in all three pieces was direct and thrusting. His handling of the Vaughan Williams generated lots of spray and foam but rather less musical shape or detailed purpose.

The choir, bright in balance if rather thin in tone, sang with scarcely flagging enthusiasm. The two soloists, soprano Franzita Whelan and baritone James Rutherford, provided a backbone of altogether greater authority.

Garvey didn't manage to find a viable balance within the composer's often extremely busy textures. The words were often difficult to hear, and, with an excessive fluidity in rhythm, the musical effect gravitated towards a kind of fluctuating amorphousness.

Stanford's songs are an altogether more straightforward proposition. In fact, in spite of the composer's consummate skill, that's where the problem lies. The word setting often follows the metrical bounce and line breaks of the rather unfortunate verse. And even with a singer of svelte tone and sensitive manner like James Rutherford, it's difficult to break free of the music's limitations.

The Hebrides overture functioned as purely orchestral works often do in the outings of choral societies, as a good reminder in a generalised kind of way of how a great piece of music goes. - Michael Dervan