Reviewed today are the National Chamber Choir, RTÉ Concert  Orchestra, and Celso Antunes at the Helix, Dublin, National Chamber Choir, RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Laurent Wagner  at the same  venue, St Patrick's Cathedral Chamber Choir, and Tom McRae at the Village, Dublin

National Chamber Choir,

RTÉ Concert Orchestra,

Celso Antunes

Helix, Dublin

Idomeneo Ballet Music, Piano Concerto In C K467, Regina Coeli K276, Vesperae Solennes De Confessore K339 - Mozart

If you wanted a definitive demonstration of the artistic poverty of Opera Ireland's Don Giovanni, you could have found it here. Composer, choir and orchestra were all the same. But the conductor, Celso Antunes, had such an invigorating effect that the performances were hardly recognisable as the work of the same people who had been heard at the Gaiety Theatre the previous weekend.

Antunes knows what he wants to hear in Mozart. He favours clearly sculpted melodic lines. He knows that Mozart's wind writing often has something special to offer, and he doesn't allow it to be swamped by the strings. He likes a string sound that's lean and pliable, full of sharp contrasts and telling in detail. And he showed he knows that rarest of arts: how to keep the contributions of trumpets, horns and trombones in Mozart in a perspective that always makes musical sense.

He secured performances that were high on illumination, getting inside the music, as it were, and delivering the sort of internal clarity so highly prized in period performances. He drove everything with a firm hand and, in the Piano Concerto In C, K467, partnered Hugh Tinney with a mixture of light and shade that cast the pianist's warmly conceived playing in the most favourable light.

Antunes's painstakingly detailed work with the National Chamber Choir, of which he is artistic director, is already familiar to audiences around the country. The choir's contributions to the two choral works of the second half were spirited and sensitive, and the four soloists - Sylvia O'Brien, Zane Senavska, Jacek Wislocki and Jeffrey Ledwidge - largely stayed within his stylistic parameters. There were times when the music-making acquired a drilled air, as if the conductor were afraid to relax or yield when fast writing needed some sort of gentle curvature in tempo. On this occasion, however, it seemed but a small price to pay for music-making of such consistent alertness and verve.

Michael Dervan

National Chamber Choir,

RTÉ Concert Orchestra,

Laurent Wagner

Helix, Dublin

Così Fan Tutte Overture, Piano Concerto In A K488, Requiem - Mozart

Once again, the partnership of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the French conductor Laurent Wagner has produced performances that make one take notice. This concert was the second all-Mozart evening given with the National Chamber Choir.

In Mozart's Piano Concerto In A K488, the playing had the responsiveness that comes when everyone listens to one another. Hugh Tinney's account of the solo part was shapely, reliable and beautifully coloured. And even though there were some mismatches in the wind's responses to the soloist's articulation, impeccable orchestral balance revealed Mozart's design as a discourse between three distinct sections: piano, strings and wind.

In Mozart's Requiem, the singing of the National Chamber Choir was tight, full-toned and clearly articulated. The range of vocal colour was wide and precisely defined, and each vocal section had distinct identity.

This impressive, rewarding singing was complemented by well-chosen soloists: Majella Cullagh (soprano), Alison Browner (alto), Evan Bowers (tenor) and Sam McElroy (bass).

One of the tantalising aspects of this concert lies in the fact that Laurent Wagner is hotly tipped as the successor to Proinnsías Ó Duinn, who will retire later this year as orchestra's principal conductor. On this and other occasions, Wagner's work suggested an orchestral trainer to whom the players can respond productively.

In his dramatised, tense view of the requiem, influences of the historical-performance movement were suggested by edgy rhythmic tension, precise phrasing and a refusal to milk the music for feeling. If this is the route for the future, it will prove demanding. But it could be just right for this orchestra.

Martin Adams

St Patrick's Cathedral Chamber Choir

St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin

This was planned as a sequence of music for Passiontide, built around works by Edmund Rubbra, Francis Poulenc and Antonín Tucapsky.

The Northampton-born Rubbra (1901-86) converted to Roman Catholicism in 1948 and began his nine deceptively plain but poignant Tenebrae settings three years later, completing them in 1961.

Poulenc wrote his Quatre Motets Pour Un Temps De Pénitence in 1938 and 1939, thinking as he worked of the 16th-century Victoria, whom he regarded as the "St-John-of- the-Cross of music".

Tucapsky wrote his Five Lenten Motets, one of his most popular pieces, in 1977, two years after he had left Czechoslovakia for London.

Andrew J Mackriell presented the music in three groups, each built around a section of Rubbra's Tenebrae, adding music from earlier times (Allegri's Miserere and two Crucifixus settings by Lotti) to provide variety.

The choir sang this ambitious programme with great concern for tonal control and good intonation, and they often achieved their goals in this regard. Some of the more vertiginous changes of harmony were negotiated with notable security, and the choral blend achieved good depth and resonance.

In terms of dynamic and expressive response, however, their work seemed more limited. The sharp contrasts of the Poulenc were hardly even hinted at, and Mackriell's conducting gravitated towards a hymn-like levelling of pace. This would present difficulties at the best of times, but in a programme that was itself in danger of lacking sufficient contrast, it was a serious liability.

The best performances came in the Tucapsky and Lotti, the pieces in which the choir's directness of approach was always likely to score most highly.

Moments of animation in the Poulenc showed serious rhythmic weakness. But some of the more demanding music was very finely done, and the sliding dissonances of Rubbra's Eram Quasi Agnus Innocens gave a good indication of the potential of this enterprising choir.

Michael Dervan

Tom McRae

The Village, Dublin

He may have studied his singer-songwriter commandments carefully - Nick Drake is the Lord your God; remember, keep holy the sadness; thou shalt not smile - but Tom McRae has distinguished himself from the multitudinous acolytes of gloom. And, as this son of two vicars should recognise, that is little short of miraculous.

With his Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album and this year's equally strong follow-up, McRae may tick the lovelorn, forlorn and world-worn boxes with as much alacrity as one man and his misery can manage, but his eerily clean-toned retribution fantasies and pitch-black humour dispel the pall of introspection.

Sheets of mist glide across the Village's narrow stage as a slow keening cello moves in sympathy on You Only Disappear. Side-lit, up-lit, back-lit, the atmospheric stage underscores the grim sentiments of McRae's obliquely portentous lyrics.

The music, however, is unladen by misery, liberated by the feeling that having hit rock bottom long ago, there's no possibility of falling further.

With gulch-dry humour, McRae celebrates the last night of his European tour. "It's a drag to end in Dublin," he deadpans. "You deserve a happy song . . . You're not going to get one."

Strait-laced and earnest, McRae at times resembles a morose Paul Simon wrangling world beats for the world beaten or a slightly anaemic Leadbelly, delivering vengeful blues without the muscle to see them through.

At his best, though, with a disenchanted Sao Paulo Rain or a Tony Blair-baiting Boy With The Bubblegun, the audience readily accept they're going to hell in a handcart. As McRae might say, let's enjoy the ride.

Peter Crawley