A round-up of reviews from Irish Timeswriters.

Repin, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jurowski, NCH, Dublin

Brahms - Violin Concerto Symphony No 1

Thursday's National Concert Hall appearance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra was to have been conducted by its current principal conductor, Kurt Masur. His withdrawal, due to a cutback in his schedule with the orchestra, led to his replacement by Vladimir Jurowski, who is due to succeed Masur as at the helm of the orchestra next September.

Jurowski is no stranger to Irish audiences, having come to international attention by conducting at the Wexford Festival in 1995 (Rimsky-Korsakov's May Night) - when he was just 23 - and 1996 (Meyerbeer's Etoile du Nord). He has been music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera since 2001, and holds posts with the Russian National Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. His handling of Brahms on Thursday showed clearly why he is regarded as hot property in symphonic repertoire as well as opera.

Performances of the symphonies of Brahms are often like a nourishing broth - good for you, but predictable and not always particularly interesting. Jurowski launched into the first symphony with an unusually fast and fiery thrust, and sustained momentum not so much by means of speed as through a long-breathed pliability of melodic line and a keen awareness that Brahms's layered complexity and rhythmic intricacy work best when they are not tamed. And he brought to the piece an emotional impact that was always fresh and alive.

Jurowski's appetite for the wholeness of Brahms, his refusal to tidy the music into neat areas of foreground and background, his steadfast avoidance of the tyranny of the barline, made the music more thoroughly modern and romantic than usual.

The actual orchestral playing, for all its expressive weight, didn't have the technical refinement or sheer precision that was to be found in the orchestra's earlier Dublin performances under Masur. But its sense of freedom, of music being made on the wing, was more than adequate compensation. Vadim Repin was the often commanding soloist in the Brahms Violin Concerto. But his playing was oddly adjusted in certain respects, sometimes delivering accompanying passage work with the prominence of a poorly balanced recording, and showing more comfort in stirring up drive and action than in shaping moments of quieter lyricism.

There was no shortage of impressive effects in his playing, but more impressive was that the orchestra often phrased string passages with more persuasive eloquence than the soloist. Michael Dervan

The Handsome Family, Spirit Store, Dundalk

The novelty of Brett and Rennie Sparks as country music's answer to Gomez and Morticia Addams has long worn off; it has been replaced, however, by two singular figures that bear a resemblance to Tammy Wynette as a member of The Cure and George Jones as an extra on Twin Peaks.

Despite their familiarity with the Irish landscape - the Sparks are regular visitors here - and a coterie of Irish music fans with them, there remains in their make-up a sense of otherness. It sounds silly to say it, but most of the time, they look like ghosts.

For the best part of 10 years, Brett and Rennie have been hovering around the fringes of acceptance by the country music clan, a certain section of which find it difficult to embrace anything other than staid and conservative. That the Handsome Family appear to have finally broken through the barrier is down to equal parts persistence and quality of material. What distinguishes them, of course, from the usual country music tropes is the depth of their deadpan lyrics and their musical flourishes, which although sparse are nevertheless executed with finesse and fun.

It's the words, though, that get their message across; quite possibly the world's first genuinely responsible eco-aware alternative country act, the lyrics touch on the urban versus rural debate. Here be songs of sunsets vying with mountains of plastic bags, of forests being chopped down to make space for motorways, the joys of underage drinking on golf courses rather than parking lots. There are songs about love, of course, but not in a nice way. Death and blood make regular appearances. And - you'd be advised to mark their words - there is always something nasty lurking in the woodshed.

Interlinking these concerns - divided between Brett's bear-like baritone and Rennie's moans - are mini-stories so literate and structured and so deftly told that the intermittent, irritating and quite likely staged amateur spats between husband and wife fade into the background. Tony Clayton-Lea

Also: Róisín Dubh, Galway, Sunday; Whelan's, Dublin, Monday