Voices for Chernobyl

The Voices for Chernobyl concert at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday night was about far more than the music. Besides raising money for the Chernobyl Children's Project, it celebrated links between Ireland and Belarus, and evoked powerful images of an enduring tragedy.

Mary Kennedy introduced the performers. Blanaid Murphy conducted RTE Cor na nOg in four choral pieces, and the Belarussian group, The Gostenetts, sang, danced and played a short pageant, Calling the Spring. The energy and skill of these 21 youngsters aged 10 to 15 years from Minsk was uplifting.

Emmanuel Lawler sang, and the National Chamber Choir, whose sound was not sufficiently projected for this venue, gave the first performance of Lamentation For Chernobyl. The choir's conductor, Colin Mawby, composed this dissonant, modern-modal music as a tribute to those who have died and to those who are building a better future.

The evening's main event was a performance, in Russian, by the Voices for Chernobyl Choir - around 65 singers from 14 Irish choirs - of 10 of Rachmaninov's Vespers. The conductor was Blanaid Murphy.

The sound was good, and the choir coped well with many of this music's more obvious difficulties, including the several low B flats for basses. The performance was nevertheless patchy, being not always confident and defined enough for this highly linear, gesturally calculated music. The best movements included those involving the soloists, Lawler and Cliona McDonough, (especially Lawler), the Hail Mary and the concluding hymn of thanksgiving.

Throughout the Vespers, a film showed the devastation caused by the Chernobyl disaster to the environment and, above all, to people. I found the contrast between Rachmaninov's warm, passionate music and these silent images of destruction, hope, bravery and despair, very affecting. When the concluding speeches were over, that remained.