A selection of reviews from the world of the arts.

Keane

Olympia Theatre, Dublin

"So this is Keane's first time in Dublin," says the extraordinarily chipper singer Tom Chaplin. "What a place to be for a band called Keane!" His Sussex tones are so clear and polished he could be presenting Blue Peter. "Is there anybody called Keane here tonight?" he asks.

This degree of cleanliness, innocence and utter self-absorption is what makes the band (Keane, was it?) so abominably loveable. It also sums up the trio's music.

Grouped, quite justifiably, with the innumerable "new Coldplays" out there, Keane ache with sensitivity, simplicity and insistency, following one basic recipe almost slavishly: liberal electric piano; a dash of drums; bring the vocals to simmer.

But what is most striking about this group (Keane, or something), is the transcendental level of over-exertion they invest in performance.

Can't Stop Now is an effective opener, full of graceful piano figures and relentless surge, to which pianist Tim Rice-Oxley head-bangs like a demon.

Chaplin (not exactly the great entertainer) whirls around the stage with his mic stand, endlessly pursued by swooping spotlights. It's like a pop concert during a prison break. If the songs - Everybody's Changing, Sunshine and We Might as Well Be Strangers ("probably Keane's saddest song") - are less energetic, they do flow with prepossessing elegance.

Of course, the best measure of adult-oriented pop can be read from the faces of couples. At most concerts, one partner attends as a gesture of self-sacrifice, or because they lost an argument.

At Keane's, each face glows with mutual contentment and big hit Somewhere Only We Know swells with precision.

Stretching out the set with B-sides, new songs, and a football chant of "Keano" so prolonged they should have been booked for time-wasting, Keane still wrap things up - encore and all - in under an hour.

Insubstantial perhaps, but as sweet and tolerable as a diet of chocolate cake.

Peter Crawley

Ulster Orchestra - Enrique Barrios

Ulster Hall, Belfast

Revueltas - Janitzio. Angulo - Los centinelas de Etersa. Moncayo - Huapango. Chávez - Symphony No 5. Márquez - Danzón No 2.

Only two of the composers in this programme devoted to Mexican composers - the fifth in the current series of BBC Invitation Concerts - are familiar even as names: Silvestre Revueltas and Carlos Chávez.

Raw but never raucous, Revueltas's Janitzio combines the bright sonorities of Mexican street music with Stravinskyan cross-rhythms and a spare intensity all his own.

The result came up fresher than the two other "fun" pieces, Márquez's Danzón and Moncayo's Huapango, both of which had their moments but tended to overwork their material.

We were, however, privileged to be able to listen to the latter piece with an innocent ear, as in Mexico it has apparently been done to death as background music for films and television. All these pieces are given performance of great verve and commitment by the Ulster Orchestra under Enrique Barrios.

The two longest works were near opposites. Angulo's concerto for flute (or rather flutes, as the three movements are written respectively for standard flute, alto flute and piccolo) is the sort of piece usually described as "accessible": agreeably tuneful, tastefully scored, but not immediately striking. It was, however, very nicely played by Elena Durán.

The symphony for string orchestra by Revueltas's longer-lived contemporary Carlos Chávez was very different.

A formidable piece with some striking sonorities, its brooding, cloudy tonality places it in the European mainstream, although one sensed that much of its turbulent energy comes from the ingrained influence of Mexican rhythms and melodies.

Dermot Gault

Clíona Doris (harp) - Noel Eccles (percussion)

Elmwood Hall, Belfast

Ruiz de Ribayaz - Dances from 'Luz y Norte'. Ortiz - La Guabina. Seis por derecho. Pasaje número uno. Lauro - Venezuelan Waltzes. Márquez - Son a Tamayo.

This is the first concert for harp and percussion that I can remember attending. It's an unusual combination, though an attractive one, and it was not surprising to learn that most of the works on the programme had been arranged or adapted by the performers (the exception was the Márquez piece, which was written for his wife, one of Mexico's leading harpists).

This was sunny, attractive music, recognisably Latin American in feel - easy listening, in other words, and tastefully arranged and played.

The Márquez uses pre-recorded tape, but the idiom was far less modernist than this might suggest. Most of the composers are living or recently deceased, although the Ribayaz dances, published in Madrid in 1677, reminded us that there is a great Spanish tradition dating back at least to the Renaissance.

Both artists originated locally. Clíona Doris's harp was always a pleasure, but one regretted that the flat seating of the Elmwood Hall made it hard to see what Noel Eccles was up to. The large array of percussion instruments ranged in front of the audience included a "spring drum", basically a metal spring enclosed in a resonating chamber, which creates an extraordinary roaring noise that could almost have been electronic in origin.

Many of the percussion instruments were specifically Latin American - the guerro, for instance - and so, apparently, is the harp; Clíona Doris revealed that the harp is the national instrument not only of Ireland, but also of Paraguay.

Dermot Gault

David Lee (organ)

St Michael's,

Dún Laoghaire

Scheidt - Fantasia super Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ. Bach - Eight Short Preludes and Fugues. Bruhns - Fantasia on Nun komm der Heiden Heiland. Handel - A Voluntary on a flight of angels. Bach - Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV537.

Experts differ as to who might have been the author of the Eight Short Preludes and Fugues that are still printed under the name of Johann Sebastian Bach. But most agree that Bach himself is unlikely to have been the author.

Uncertainties of authorship, especially if the truth seems to wipe away the association with a great name, usually make it difficult for any work to hold a place in the standard repertoire.

Witness the fate of the Jena Symphony once ascribed to Beethoven, the Adelaide Violin Concerto that Marius Casadesus passed off as being by Mozart (he owned up during a court case to claim the copyright), or the Haydn piano sonata forgeries that took in the Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon and the pianist Paul Badura-Skoda.

The Eight Short Preludes and Fugues attributed to Bach are now more likely to get the attention of the organ student than the seasoned performer. And it is typical of the enterprise of David Lee that he should have chosen them for a public airing at his recital at St Michael's, Dún Laoghaire on Sunday.

I suspect the last time I actually heard them was when, as a student, they raced and stumbled under my own fingers.

On Sunday, I listened to them again with a considerable feeling of nostalgia. My fond memories of the pleasure they had given me as a player were not quite matched, however, by the rewards they offered me as a listener. Even in the agreeably breezy performances by David Lee, the music seemed to get ahead of itself in ways that one doesn't associate with even the shortest works of Bach.

Lee also presented chorale workings by Scheidt and Bruhns (the latter interspersed with chorale verses sung by Philip O'Reilly with rather too prominent and fruity a vibrato), and a delicate short voluntary by Handel. But the playing that impressed most came in the final work, Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in C minor - grave, imposing, ineluctable.

Michael Dervan