Ahead of the game

L'invitation au chateau - Poulenc

4 Songs - Duparc Sonata for trumpet, horn and trombone - Poulenc

Cocardes - Poulenc

Elegie - Poulenc

Chansons madecasses - Ravel

Sextet - Poulenc

The centenary of the birth of Francis Poulenc falls next year. To mark the occasion, pianist Reamonn Keary has persuaded the National Concert Hall and members of the National Symphony Orchestra to get in early with a five-concert celebration that will spread itself out until next March.

Poulenc, known for the brilliance and wit of his music, can be seen in many pieces as a sort of jester. As Constant Lambert memorably put it in the 1930s, he doesn't write "in any particular style that he fancies to be fashionable at the moment, but in every style of the past and present that is not actually frowned on as pompous and outmoded".

For the launch of his Poulenc Panorama at the John Field Room last night, Keary opted to open with L'invitation au chateau, a sequence of flimsy fragments for clarinet, violin and piano from the incidental music to an Anouilh play. In spite of the extreme rarity of the music, the idea rather backfired, and in a concert setting the music came across as a series of contextless scraps from the worktable.

Neither the Sonata for horn, trumpet and trombone, nor the genuinely more adventurous Cocteau settings of Cocardes (with mezzo soprano Colette McGahon) had quite the instrumental precision to reveal the composer at his sharpest, a pity, as Cocardes seems to offer Poulenc with his most interesting side out. McGahon also sang four Duparc songs and Ravel's Chansons made casses with an evident understanding which somehow didn't always come into clear musical focus.

Fergus O'Carroll's handling of the Elegie for horn and piano was, in spite of moments of weakness, among the most penetrating offerings of the evening. Yet the most polished playing, the fullest encapsulation of Poulencian joie de vivre, was reserved for the buoyant closing Sextet, understandably, the work among the evening's offerings which has made the greatest headway with audiences worldwide.