Classical music, opera, delta blues and jazz in many forms feature in today's reviews.

David Grimal, National Symphony Orchestra/William Eddins

National Concert Hall, Dublin

Mystic Nativity - Philip Martin. Violin Concerto - Beethoven. Symphony No 92 (Oxford) - Haydn

Friday's concert epitomised the benefits of William Eddins's work as principal guest conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Strengths were equally evident in classical works and in a new work by Philip Martin.

Mystic Nativity, originally scheduled for performance 18 months ago, is an extended three-movement symphony commissioned by RTÉ and scored for large orchestra. Like Martin's Beato Angelico (1990), it is inspired by painting, in this case Botticelli's mysteriously symbolic depiction of Christ's nativity. And, like that painting, it is elaborately layered.

This well-crafted work manages to be of its time while inhabiting an old aesthetic world. The names that come to mind are Walton and Vaughan Williams in the 1930s, not because of imitation but because all three composers create a distinctive harmonic language through the contrapuntal combination of certain kinds of vigorously rhythmic, colourful ideas.

Eddins was in secure command here and in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, where the 30-year-old French violinist David Grimal replaced the originally advertised Julian Rachlin. Rhythmic animation and beauty of tone were Grimal's hallmarks, although his tendency to grasp at the possibilities of the moment sometimes intruded on a performance otherwise notable for its intelligent appreciation of the subtle relationship between solo and orchestral writing.

Haydn's Oxford Symphony, No 92, was packed with rhythmic animation, and even though the minuet movement tended to concentrate on accent at the expense of underlying metrical consistency, this was a well-defined performance. Eddins has a knack of giving the orchestra confidence with music of this period, where they have tended not to be strong. They responded warmly and did justice to a work that, as the closing item of a strong concert, was given the pride of place it and the composer deserve.

Martin Adams

Kathleen Ferrier Award Winners

Belfast Festival

Kathleen Ferrier, who died 50 years ago, at the age of 41, is remembered through a small but treasurable legacy of recordings. The English contralto and her uniquely touching music-making have been celebrated annually since 1956 through a competition set up in her name, the Kathleen Ferrier Award.

As part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Ferrier's death, the Belfast Festival at Queen's in association with the BBC presented recitals by four of the award winners: mezzo-soprano Wendy Dawn Thompson (2003), soprano Joan Rodgers (1981), tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones (1992) and soprano Yvonne Kenny (1975).

Thompson, who was accompanied by fellow New Zealander Lindy Tennent-Brown, sounded slightly nervous in her selection of Poulenc, Schubert and Liszt, really warming up only midway through her programme, in Schubert's Suleika I, and sounding at her best in the narrative of Liszt's Es War Ein König In Thule.

Rodgers spread her net much wider, embracing no less than nine composers - six Russian, two French and one Austrian - delivering all 18 songs with focused intelligence. The high points were Rachmaninov's Do Not Sing Me The Songs Of Georgia and Wolf's Erstes Liebeslied Eines Mädchens (A Girl's First Love Song).

Hughes Jones is a Welsh tenor in the Italianate manner of Dennis O'Neill. He opened modestly with Alessandro Scarlatti's Le Violette but quickly moved into high gear, with all the mannerisms of the breed. The style did not sit comfortably on songs by Bellini, and even less so on Liszt's Petrarch Sonnets. It was in his closing group by Verdi and Tosti where the stylistic tics that had earlier seemed so out of place at last found a home that seemed more apt.

The highlight of the day's offerings, and by a long distance, was the closing recital by Yvonne Kenny. She sang songs by Schubert, Liszt, Mahler, Gounod, Hahn and Copland with readily communicative spirit, carrying word and music as distinct yet related streams. She respected the nuances of individual musical style while revealing the responses of her own rich personality.

Michael Dervan

Khanda & Karnataka College of Percussion

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray

There's only one word to describe last Saturday's concert involving the marriage of Irish, Indian and jazz idioms in Khanda and the Karnataka College of Percussion, from Bangalore: hugely enjoyable, exuberant and fascinating.

So that's more than one word? Nobody's counting, unless it was the musicians themselves as they worked through the intricacies of this remarkable example of cross-cultural fertilisation.

And it was intricate. The college of percussion, represented by R. A. Ramamani (voice), T. A. S. Mani (mridangam) and Ramesh Shotham (ghatam, morsing) - percussion instruments, not incidentally - opened with three examples of southern Indian classical music. Highly rhythmic and structured, it nevertheless seemed to allow considerable latitude for improvisation.

The nuances of the music are beyond untutored Western ears, but it was compelling to hear the interplay between Ramamani's extraordinary voice and the amazing skills of Mani and Shotham as they tossed rhythmic ideas back and forth and cued each other in the direction each piece was going to take.

Khanda - Martin Nolan (pipes/whistles), Peter Browne (accordion), Ellen Cranitch (flutes), Tommy Halferty (guitar), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass guitar) and Conor Guilfoyle (drums) - came on for a programme of their own music. Carried off with great zest, if a little loose and wild at times, it included some delightful flute and accordion solos on their opening piece, a fine guitar and accordion chase on Rakish Paddy and a notable guitar and pipes duet on An Raibh Tú Ag An gCarraig, before winding up the first set with a couple of reels.

The second set opened with some intercultural vocal fun between Martin Nolan and Ramesh Shotham and a gorgeous Over The Moore To Maggie, courtesy of Nolan. But the real meat of the cultural exchanges came with Ronan Guilfoyle's Five Cities Suite, on which Khanda and the college of percussion joined forces. It's a remarkable piece of music: complex but allowing plenty of room for improvisation while retaining a sense of direction and structure.

That, in itself, is a tribute to Guilfoyle's command of the resources used, but it's also ample evidence of the musicians' ability to immerse themselves in this always engaging hybrid. Carried off with impressive aplomb and scarcely a hitch, the suite included notable contributions from Ramamani in the second movement, an extraordinary pipes solo from Nolan in the third and some beautiful alto flute from Cranitch in the fourth before finishing with a zestful, triumphant finale that earned them a well-deserved standing ovation. It's a pity Khanda or their Indian-augmented nine-piece incarnation can't get together more often.

Ray Comiskey

Cinderella

Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork

Rossini's Cinderella has no pumpkins, mice or fairy spells. The magic is all in the music, and musical as well as theatrical magic abounds in Opera Theatre Company's touring production, which opened in Cork on Friday.

Sung in English, and considerably truncated, Annilese Miskimmon's production is set in the 1950s, a period lovingly evoked by Dick Bird's attractive costumes and decor. Miskimmon's direction is deft, lucid and often very funny, with just the odd sharp reminder of the story's dark side.

Ann Marie Gibbons is a Cinderella of considerable vocal charm. The Mayo-born mezzo sings page after page of florid music with crisp agility, and she is equally impressive in her phrasing and control of legato in slow passages.

Soprano Elizabeth Woods and mezzo Brigit Knowles make a sprightly and musically disciplined pair of bitchy but far-from-ugly sisters.

Andrew Mackenzie Wicks's mellifluous tenor hero is a tad light in weight, but he has a graceful delivery and he attacks the wide interval leaps in his big aria with aplomb.

Owen Gilhooly as the valet Dandini can't quite keep up the pace in his florid music, but elsewhere his Italianate high baritone is rich in timbre and exciting in prospect.

Eric Roberts, vocally drier than many buffo basses, is a master of comic timing and patter delivery as the spineless Don Magnifico. The philosopher Alidoro, here a benign vicar, is smoothly sung by baritone Matthew Hargreaves.

Musical ensemble dominates the score of Cinderella. Fergus Sheil, who conducts a 14-instrument band using Jonathan Dove's reduced orchestrations, procures good vocal blending in a series of set pieces of up to seven voices. His speeds sound absolutely right, and he is as adept at springing the rhythms of the patter sections as he is at producing a flowing smoothness in the broader episodes.

• At the Theatre Royal, Waterford, on Thursday and Mullingar Arts Centre on Saturday, then touring until the end of the month

John Allen

John Hiatt and the Goners

The Helix, Dublin

John Hiatt is a songwriters' songwriter, and his songs have been covered by an illustrious guitar-slinging posse, including Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Willie Nelson, Iggy Pop and Bonnie Raitt. His music is, for the most part, a mixed breed of country, blues and gospel, raised in the cornfields of Indiana; play them backwards and you get your money, your house and your wife back, via a trip through the plains of Kansas and the Colorado river.

Here, he had his usual bandits in tow, the Goners, a three-piece he has been recording and performing with on and off since 1988. There is no doubt that, technically, bassist Dave Ranson and drummer Kenneth Blevins are up to the task, and Sonny Landreth's slide-guitar technique has to be seen to be believed.

With many true-blue songwriters, however, the complexity and subtlety of the songcraft can leave the listener with what is an impressively played and written but ultimately bland song (for further information, see Ron Sexsmith and selected works by Sting). John Hiatt suffers a little from this, and although his black soul voice, trapped in a white man singing country music from the Deep South, is impressive and rousing, often the playing around him was overly complicated and smothered the songs, preventing the music from breathing a little and really rocking out. Although Landreth's playing is stunning, fewer notes and a bit more groove would go a long way to making some really memorable riffs.

That said, many of the songs trucked along nicely and provoked enthusiastic applause and dancing in the aisles, if not back flips.

Hiatt began the night with fours songs on his lonesome and ended the second encore in similar fashion, with lush guitar-picking and folky vocals ringing through pleasantly on Crossing Muddy Water, Lift Up Every Stone and Cold River.

When the band joined him the pace picked up, and Hiatt rocked and stomped his way through a mix of old and new, including The Tiki Bar Is Open, Circle Back and Almost Fed Up With The Blues, with the crowd tapping feet and slapping thighs every step of the way.

Swampy delta blues, then, played with energy, style and soul.

Laurence Mackin