The University of Limerick, currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, put on a special concert at the University Concert Hall, Limerick, on Saturday and Sunday. A long and varied evening embraced a pre-concert, community-oriented offering for choir and percussion by Kenneth Edge and Tommy Hayes, performances by the amateur University of Limerick Orchestra, a demonstration of the dance-mapping computer project Litefoot, the debut of a group, Gaoth, which plans to blend jazz, traditional Irish, classical and other styles, and, at the core of the proceedings, performances of works by four Irish composers.
The Irish Chamber Orchestra gave the premiere of John Buckley's Saxophone Concerto, written for and dedicated to Kenneth Edge. It's a virtuosic piece for a virtuoso, showing the same sort of instrumental brilliance as the composer's Organ Concerto and conveying at times a distinct French flavour in the string writing, a sort of homage, perhaps, to the saxophone's country of origin.
The opening toccata runs without break in rapid notes for over 200 bars, and the slower sections, too, are more florid than restrained. With stalwart support from the orchestra, Edge took all of this in his stride, eschewing the sweetness and inwardness of the saxophone and responding with husky-toned angular vitality.
The orchestra, playing under the direction of its leader, Fionnuala Hunt, also performed Aloys Fleischmann's muted lament, Elizabeth MacDermott Roe, and were joined by Micheal O Suilleabhain for a number of his green aural wallpaper compositions, the longest of them (with a striking borrowing from Bach), taken from the beginning of his music for the 1926 film Irish Destiny.
Specially composed music for another film, The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) was played on the hall's characterful Compton cinema organ by Gerald Barry. O Suilleabhain's music took an approach of illustrative acceptance. Barry's kept far more distance in its association with the images on the screen, providing a commentary that was refreshingly sharp, wry and amusing.
