Reviewed: Maxim Vengerov, Henry and Harrietand Sinead O'Connor

Vengerov, Feiler, Power, UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra

NCH, Dublin

Mozart - Violin Concerto No 2 in D K211. Shostakovich - Chamber Symphony in C minor Op 110a. Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364, Symphony No 29 in A K K201

This concert was not quite the one the audience was expecting. Maxim Vengerov had been billed to direct the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and to play solo in three works. Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 2 in D K211 was followed by Vengerov conducting Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony Op. 110a, which had been advertised as the closing item. After the interval, Vengerov announced that a slow-healing injury to his right arm meant that he would not play in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364 and that Mozart's Violin Concerto No 4 would be replaced by Symphony No 29 in A K201.

There was no evidence of disappointment from the large audience that had been drawn by his reputation as a player. Nor should there have been, for the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra is a group whose commanding musical abilities are complemented by their rapport with Vengerov, who, at 33, is only just the oldest player.

For the Sinfonia Concertante, the violin soloist was Naiumi Feiler, whose playing, and whose communication with the star-quality viola player Lawrence Power, left no room for disappointment, even though Vengerov had already shown his class in the one solo he did play. Musical intelligence was especially striking in the cadenza he had prepared for the Violin Concerto No 2. It was perhaps a little Beethovenian in figuration; but unlike so many cadenzas written by post-classical soloists, it was harmonically connected to the surrounding music.

The Symphony No 29 had the flair that characterised the whole concert - bags of character, a very strong give-and-take between players and an evident joy in making music. However, the most complete performance of the evening was of the Chamber Symphony Op 110a, composed by Vengerov's fellow-Russian, Shostakovich.

Here, Vengerov was inside every aspect. If you wanted authenticity, this was it.

Martin Adams

Henry and Harriet

Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast

There is something about the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival that encourages its participants to behave in a quirky manner. Not that Kabosh theatre has ever needed much encouragement to go out on a limb in search of unusual theatre environments. And so it is that small knots of people are assembling at the Northern Whig to have a luggage label strung around their necks in preparation for a sedate perambulation through the quarter's narrow streets and cobbled courtyards.

The year is 1912 and leading the procession is one Henry Surphlis, a carpenter on the Titanic, who is on the threshold of a new life on the other side of the Atlantic with his fiancee, Harriet Sweetlove. Carlo Gébler's deceptively gentle new play, directed with a sharp eye for authentic period detail by Paula McFetridge, is a quietly subversive little piece, which probes the thin veneer of charm and bonhomie cultivated by members of the Ulster Unionist Council - Carson's anti-Home Rule organisation - as they go about their daily business.

Gerard McCabe (alternating with Joe Rea in each evening's four performances) is an engaging Henry, who is neither as knowing nor as streetwise as he lets on. Swaggering with confidence and optimism, he leads his followers on a merry dance from shipping office to leather-goods store, gents' outfitters and fancy-goods emporium, ticking off his list of errands on his last day in Belfast. But a growing sense of menace follows him, emanating first from Gordon Fulton and Niall Cusack's hard-nosed traders, then James Doran's Leonard Louden, his rival in love and money. In the unlikely surroundings of Maggie Boyd's china shop, Henry has a three-way showdown with Harriet and Leonard, escaping death from the barrel of a gun and making a dash for freedom in the direction of the doomed vessel. It is left to Brigid Erin Bates's Maggie to narrate crisply the final chapter in Henry's fateful journey. And while Gébler's writing style is lovely to listen to, in dramatic terms the abrupt disappearance of our hero, before his story's end, leaves one feeling a tad stranded in thin air.

Runs until Saturday

Jane Coyle

Sinéad O'Connor

Dublin Castle

By his own admission, Rónán Ó Snodaigh had "mixed feelings" about this gig. When he got up in the morning, dark clouds had threatened to turn the second day of the Heineken Green Energy festival into something of a damp squib. But fortune favours the brave, and by the time the Kíla frontman led his band on stage to support Sinéad O'Connor the clouds had dispersed and the sun was smiling down on an upbeat Dublin Castle crowd.

This is the sort of event Kíla revel in. Their rollicking rhythms and soaring solos, vocal and instrumental, skip across the crowd like a goat tilting over a mountain, and you would have to be made of stone not to find yourself swaying in time or clapping along. There is an energy, an honesty and a cast-iron authenticity to Kíla's music that is as infectious as it is charming. The breadth of influences is wide; they might come from a traditional Irish canon, but the songwriting is shot through with shades of Caribbean rhythms, spicy licks from the Middle East, and Afro-style harmonies, and the performance is just as accomplished.

Sinéad O'Connor's performance is a more studied affair. O'Connor is one of the most divisive performers in Irish music, and has no middle-of-the- road fans - you either love her or, eh, you really don't love her. She seems delighted to be back on stage and genuinely enthusiastic about her new record, with the set containing some of what her fans can expect when Theology is released next month. Her songwriting plays to her strengths, and her towering vocals are never toppled from their summit. O'Connor's voice cuts a swathe through the crowd, and the band have their work cut out filling the space around it.

Two tracks from the new album, Jeremiah (Something Beautiful) and Isaiah - If You Had a Vineyard, have fans enraptured. However, it is when she pulls out the old warhorse, Nothing Compares 2 U (or "that song" as she witheringly and somewhat contemptuously refers to it) that her class shows. Her version might be about 17- years-old, and it might straddle the border between classic and cliche, but it still has the power to provoke. Perhaps she needs a group like Kíla, with their irrepressible sense of adventure, to make the rest of the set stand up beside it.

Laurence Mackin