Donohoe, RTÉ NSO/Anissimov

NCH, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Borodin/Tcherepnin - Notturno. Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 1.

Prokofiev - Symphony No 5

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra opened its new cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos with what, I suspect, was as idiosyncratic an account of the First Concerto as ever has been heard at the National Concert Hall. The most obvious idiosyncrasies were to be found in the pacing of the outer movements.

Both were played not just more briskly than normal but with a sort of raciness which, from time to time gave the impression of the performer's fleet fingers running away with the music. Donohoe is a gifted performer with more than enough in terms of technical resources to weather the challenges he presented himself with, and he provided moments of contrast, too, by unwinding the tension and drawing his listeners in with playing of hushed communicativeness.

Overall, although the matching of music and interpretative approach was altogether closer in the slow movement, the musical effect was patchy; the extremes of contrast sounding too arbitrary to be entirely convincing.

The evening opened with Nikolai Tcherepnin's orchestration of the nocturne from Alexander Borodin's Second String Quartet, a movement that has attracted more than its fair share of arrangements over the years.

Tcherepnin's version for full orchestra was published in 1935 and embellishes Borodin's sweet tunefulness with candy-floss accompanimental embellishments as well as some portentous brass intrusions which, even in Alexander Anissimov's straight delivery, didn't quite sit comfortably with the music's character.

The most successful performance was of the closing symphony, Prokofiev's war-time Fifth, which was delayed at its 1945 première by the sound of artillery, fired to celebrate the crossing of the Vistula by the Red Army on its march into Nazi Germany.

Anissimov's approach was one of dogged determination, relieved by the unleashing of blazing climaxes on demand. There was little here of the sophistication he has brought in the past to the orchestral music of Rachmaninov. But the playing packed a real punch, to which the audience responded with prolonged enthusiasm.

Gregory Harrington (violin)

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Michael Dungan

Ysaÿe - Sonata in A minor Op 27 No 2. Steven Gerber - Three songs based on the poems of W.B. Yeats. Jorge Sosa - Capricho. Kreisler - Recitative and Scherzo. Bach - Chaconne in D minor

Dublin-born violinist Gregory Harrington presented a widely contrasting mix of old and new in his recital for unaccompanied violin at the Hugh Lane Gallery on Sunday.

He opened with Bach as filtered through the romantic sound-world of Eugène Ysaÿe, the second of whose virtuosic and Bach-inspired solo sonatas quotes directly from the E major Partita. Harrington played with rapt intensity in the intricate, chromatic counterpoint of the outer movements where, alas, his tuning was often a casualty of Ysaÿe's hellish demands.

American Steven Gerber (b. 1948) and Mexican Jorge Sosa (b. 1976), both in attendance, are composers based in New York where Harrington currently teaches and is continuing his studies. The melodic, sometimes folk-like simplicity of Gerber's songs for unaccompanied violin occasioned rich, voice-like playing. In Sosa's Capricho, Harrington, who described the three-movement work as "very passionate", was surprisingly restrained.

His expressivity was markedly more free-ranging in the wordless but dramatic narrative which opens Kreisler's Recitative and Scherzo. In the latter movement he gamely confronted the great composer-performer's technical challenges head-on but was again let down by lapses in tuning.

Overall this young performer appeared often to be punching above his weight, something he did with all the admirable fearlessness which that requires.

It was in the Bach with which he closed, the Chaconne in D minor, that he best managed the pressure. Here he produced his most satisfactory marriage of technical control and emotional intensity. In short, he saved his best playing for the best music.