Reviewed today are ECM 05: Autumn Cycle at Libery Hall, Dublin and organist Una Russell at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin

ECM 05: Autumn Cycle

Liberty Hall, Dublin

Ray Comiskey

The opening concert of The Improvised Music Company's autumn series celebrating the great German label, ECM, offered examples of startlingly different music. Sponsored by the Alliance Française and Goethe Institute, it featured Napoli's Walls, the quartet of French iconoclast Louis Sclavis, and the classical duo of cellist Anja Lechner and pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos.

With the leader on bass clarinet, soprano and clarinet, Napoli's Walls was completed by Vincent Courtois (cello), Hasse Poulsen (guitar) and the extraordinary Médéric Collignon (pocket trumpet/flugelhorn/ electronics/ voice). Initially inspired by the graffiti art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest adorning Naples, their music has interiorised its source into an amazing amalgam of free jazz, street sounds, folk song and dance to produce something unique.

Wry, tart, angular, raucous, delicate, humorous, ugly and beautiful, it offered a seeming paradox; wild, adventurous playing in which anything could happen - and frequently did - yet which was encased in structures whose strict formality, though not always obvious, was always there. In pieces such as the eponymous Napoli's Walls, Kennedy In Napoli, Colleur de Nuit and Divination Moderne, regardless of how far they strayed from tonality and rhythmic continuity, the rigour of the quartet's work was always evident.

This was particularly clear in the unison passages involving Sclavis and Collignon, and Sclavis and Courtois, which offered reference points in even the wildest of exchanges. Collignon, especially, was a remarkable colouristic element, he is a virtuoso painter in sound with a clear notion of absurdity. And both Sclavis, whose instrumental command (including a stunning circular breathing) allowed him to weave his own virtuoso colours into the fabric of the discourse, and longtime colleague Courtois, are front-rank improvisers.

Napoli's Walls polarised the audience: some left before the end, others gave it a standing ovation. And it has to be said it's not music which translates fully to recording. Very much of the moment, it has to be experienced live in all its risk-taking success and failure. Would you buy the CD and attend their next concert? The answers are no and yes.

For Lechner and Tsabropoulos the answer is yes to both questions. Though it also contains improvisation, their music owes much to classical, Middle Eastern and Byzantine hymn sources and nothing to jazz. In a programme of pieces by the Armenian composer/ philosopher GI Gurdjieff (Chant from a Holy Book, Armenian Song, Sayid Dance, Bayati, Duduki) and Tsabropoulos (Greek Dance, three pieces based on Byzantine hymns), they produced duets of spellbinding beauty.

Exquisitely played, it was music of great intimacy and warmth, utterly contemporary, yet also evoking an older world where, although time has stood still, custom has not staled its impact. That, in itself, is a tribute to the performance of Lechner and Tsabropoulos, who somehow managed to immerse themselves in the character of the compositions and brought a fresh perspective to them without destroying either their character or their beauty.

Una Russell (organ)

St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin

Martin Adams

Couperin - Messe propre pour les couvents (exc).

Rheinberger - Sonata in A minor Op 98.

Reger - Benedictus Op 59 no 9.

Callaerts - Toccata op 20

Una Russell's recital made one think about the music far more than about how it was being played, and for the best possible reasons. Her playing was not obviously demonstrative; but it was always well-rounded in its musicality, determined to shape each piece in a natural way.

I suspect that it was possible to get from this versatile organ a better imitation of the French Tierce en taille registration that Couperin specified for the Benedictus of the Messe pour les couvents. However, Russell made a distinct and appropriate stylistic point when she moved on to the sonata by Rheinberger, by adopting a more connected style of phrasing.

The vulgar virtuosity of Callaerts's Toccata Op 20 made a memorable end to the recital, and the quiet expressivity of Reger's Benedictus Op 59 No 9 was a well-chosen calm before the storm. However, the piece which lingered in my memory was the Rheinberger sonata; and again, this was for the best reasons.

As Gerard Gillen said in his spoken introduction to the recital, there is a well-deserved reawakening of interest in Rheinberger's music. The first movement of the Sonata in A minor Op 98 is based on the ancient chant known as tonus peregrinus, because it wandered outside the rules of modal theory.

The last movement is a 19th-century equivalent of that concept - a "Fuga cromatica" whose subject uses all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. This fascinating and brilliantly executed specimen of concept-music shows exactly why Rheinberger deserves to be taken seriously.