Under the Rose (2000) - Ailis Ni Riain
Pour un temps (1990) - Francois Rosse
The Jealous Moon (world premiere) - Grainne Mulvey
Fratres (1980) - Arvo Part
The White Pages (1995) - Michael Torke
Concorde's appetite for new music could be called insatiable - and this characteristically adventurous programme brought works by two young Irish composers as well as by composers from abroad to an appreciative audience in the Hugh Lane Gallery.
Ailis Ni Riain's Under The Rose (four short trios for flutes, violin and piano) was inspired by some of Jack Yeats's pictures in the National Gallery. Like the titles of the pictures the music evoked rather than defined, encouraging the listener to move into a world of gentle fantasy. A surprise was the last of the four, The Singing Horseman, which used folk-like material in a straightforward way, relating the music very firmly to the imaginative Ireland of the picture.
Grainne Mulvey's The Jealous Moon (a quartet for flutes, clarinets, violin and cello) relates to the lunar eclipse of last January and to a poem by Anne Hartigan. A lot of play is made with the higher notes of the instruments crowding each other so that one thought of an earlier poet, F.R. Higgins, who wrote of the new moon's "screech of steel". Other sound effects involved breathing rather than blowing through the wind instruments. The composer's interest in colour suggests that the work might be better served by an expanded orchestral version.
The works by Rosse, Part and Torke all play tricks with time. Their use of repetition lulls, in the case of Rosse, browbeats, in the case of Torke, the ear into acquiescence, and if the listener does not remain alert, which isn't easy, more time elapses than one realises; it is hard to tell whether one has been caught up by the music or just fallen into a brown study and failed to register what has been heard.