Irish Times critics review performances from Christ Church Baroque with Paul Goodwin at Christ Church; Kenneth Edge on saxophone at Bank of Ireland Arts Centre; Orna Loughnane and Darina Gibson on violin and piano respectively at the John Field Room, NCHand a performance ofThe Bus at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny

Christ Church Baroque/Paul Goodwin at Christ Church, Dublin

Fairy Queen Suite - Purcell

Les Paladins Suite - Rameau

La Grande Pièce Royale - Delalande

Musique De Table, 3me Production - Telemann

Paul Goodwin, the third visitor in Christ Church Baroque's hitherto all-British International Directors Series, chose on Saturday to deal with music showing French influences. The original programme included a fifth item, a sonata from George Muffat's Armonico Tributo. In the event, the programme seemed long enough, and it was clear from some of the performances that stretching the same preparatory work over more repertoire would hardly have been a good idea.

The evening did not get off to a good start. Goodwin's approach to Purcell's Fairy Queen was one of a restraint that tended towards expressive anaemia. The mask of the stiff upper lip was only rarely allowed to lift, and the successes and failures in the Purcell laid the pattern for the evening's music-making. In general, the more animated and louder the music demanded the playing to be, the more successful it seemed. Finding focus and presence at the other extremes of dynamic and speed was where the problems lay.

The evening's best-known music was the suite from Telemann's Musique De Table, with some driven and rocketing writing that communicated with sharp immediacy. Even more enjoyable were the high points of the suite from Les Paladins, Rameau's comédie lyrique. Rameau may have been an unpleasant character, as Goodwin pointed out in his spoken introduction, but the cut and thrust of his music shows an orchestral imagination still all too little appreciated by the musical public at large.

Michael Dervan

Kenneth Edge (saxophone) at Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin

Study for Sax - Andrew Purcell

Arabesque - John Buckley

Excursus - Raymond Deane

Für Eine Freundin - Luca Vanneschi

Three Improvisations (exc) - Ryo Noda

The performer's personality dominated last Thursday's concert in the Mostly Modern series, given by the saxophonist Kenneth Edge. But that did not distract from the individuality of each composition.

The playing's quasi-improvisatory freedom was complemented by genial, chatty introductions. It also tended to hide the technical skill that made the freedom possible.

Two of the five pieces were written for Edge, who is above all a communicator, more concerned with defining gesture and expression than with accuracy of detail.

John Buckley's Arabesque, from 1990, is a formally clear, florid exploration of the instrument's technical and tonal possibilities. Although Raymond Deane's Excursus was commissioned by Edge and composed in 1996, this was its first performance in that form, the premiere having been given in the composer's arrangement for solo clarinet. This is music that holds one's attention, via a focused concept and economy of presentation.

The pain of an impacted wisdom tooth caused Edge to change his programme, to replace the soprano saxophone with the less dentally demanding alto instrument. So, instead of Berio's Sequenza VIIb, we heard two of Three Improvisations by the Japanese player-composer Ryo Noda.

The concert included the winning works in the Mostly Modern/AIC Young Irish Composer's Competition and the International Composers' Competition.

Andrew Purcell was the winning Irish composer. His Study For Sax neatly balances a modernistic surface, technical challenge and a traditional mode of gesture.

The international winner was the 40-year-old Italian Luca Vanneschi. Für Eine Freundin is driven by a fascinating discourse between stasis and mobility, between soft and hard sounds.

It fits a comment on the composer's engaging, slightly dotty website - "an effort, a tension, a restlessness that is still the same, that doesn't dissolve into easy conclusions".

Martin Adams

Series continues on March 7th with music by Deane and Benjamin Dwyer, performed by Vox21. Admission free

Orna Loughnane (violin), Darina Gibson (piano) at the John Field Room, NCH, Dublin

Solo Violin Sonata In A Minor BWV1003 (exc) - Bach

Sonata In B Flat K454 - Mozart

Tzigane - Ravel

Last Friday lunchtime, Orna Loughnane gave a violin recital that showed unfailing musicality, even when things did not go as smoothly as they might have done.

A large audience heard her play a demanding programme.

There were signs of nerves, perhaps, in the two movements from Bach's Solo Violin Sonata In A Minor BWV1003, with which she opened the recital. And the concluding work, Ravel's Tzigane, had a perpetual tension that made its virtuosity seem more of a struggle than it should.

Yet at all times these pieces were good to listen to, largely because of the beautiful violin tone and a free-running rhythmic style in which shaping of phrases evolved naturally, with a good sense for context.

In all of this, Loughnane had a faithful and reliable partner in pianist Darina Gibson.

Their playing had an unobtrusive liveliness, which drew one's attention to the music more than to the performers. In Mozart's Sonata In B Flat K454, balance between violin and piano was impeccable, with the violin willing to accompany the piano's relatively florid textures.

Here and in the Ravel, alertness to the relationship between the instruments reinforced the impression that the priority was to make music.

Martin Adams

The Bus at Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny

Kilkenny's Barnstorm Theatre Company has evolved a highly entertaining style of theatre for pre-teen children, mostly based on scripts by Maeve Ingoldsby. She and Philip Hardy have written this exploration of that growing world that focuses on a familiar microcosm - the school bus.

A lot goes on in there. A new boy faces his companions-to-be with trepidation, some of it justified. Rites of passage are often trials for the self-conscious. There is a deep need for acceptance, and pressures by the peer group may challenge instincts of right and wrong. Friendship can be severely tested as conflicting loyalties emerge. Girls challenge boys and vice versa in an instinctual pre-puberty rivalry.

There are pressures other than the business of learning and conforming to school regulations. Bullies loom like fairy- tale ogres, except they are all too real to the victims. And casual humiliations are inflicted on the weak or merely different.

This hour-long play has all of these elements and other, more light-hearted ones, recognition of which was manifest in the packed-house audience. Adult characters, who often have minor background roles in these plays, are virtually absent here. But like the others, this raises questions and seeks to stimulate discussion rather than teach lessons. It succeeds admirably in doing this, and is well produced with good acting, an excellent design of a bus interior and clued-in direction by Philip Hardy.

Gerry Colgan

Runs until Friday, prior to tour; bookings at 056-61674