Tamás Varga, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Bobby McFerrin at theNational Concert Hall in Dublin is reviewed by Michael Dervan  and the East Cork Early Music Festival Co Cork is reviewed by Martin Adams

Tamás Varga, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Bobby McFerrin NCH, Dublin

Classical Symphony - Prokofiev. Symphony No 25 - Mozart. Concerto in G minor RV531 - Vivaldi/McFerrin. Sorcerer's Apprentice - Dukas. Bolero - Ravel

Showmanship in classical concerts is nothing new. Franz Clement, the Viennese violinist who gave the premiere of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in Vienna in 1806, also

offered his audience some improvisations, as well as "a sonata

on one string played with the violin

upside down".

Bobby McFerrin also offered improvisation and some tricks with a solo string part, although in his case everything was vocal.

In singing the second cello part of Vivaldi's Concerto in G minor for two cellos, McFerrin's approach was mostly to impress by taking everything as straight as possible, negotiating with agility the busy patterns of the writing and reaching at moments both higher and lower than anyone might reasonably expect a voice to go, while judiciously leaving out some of most awkward challenges of the original.

The flavour and balance of that original are of course lost in the arrangement. It's no offence to the agreeable cello soloist, Tamás Varga, to point out that the interest lay primarily in the voice, whereas in Vivaldi's conception the two soloists share equally in the discourse.

In his solo scat singing McFerrin's chest- and microphone-tapping performances were anything but plain. The effect was of an almost propless one-man band, with the audience willingly participating both as backing group and tune-carriers.

As a conductor McFerrin was largely unobtrusive and middle-of-the-road. There were no particular surprises in his mostly relaxed accounts of Prokofiev, Mozart, Dukas and Ravel.

The Vienna Philharmonic's burnished string tone was a pleasure, and the unforced nature of the music-making seemed to provide time for many incidental details to register with clarity and freshness.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice may not have whipped up excitement as it sometimes does, but the slow

movement of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony yielded unexpected beauties, and the steadiness of build-up in Ravel's Bolero, taken, as it were, in one long breath, made for a performance that, unusually, seemed not a moment too long.

And at the evening's end, after an arresting fanfare, the orchestra offered as encore the end of Rossini's William Tell overture. After the brass had done their bit the players shunned their instruments and performed in no-holds-barred fashion as what must be the best-paid choir on the planet. Michael Dervan

East Cork Early Music Festival

Co Cork

Prelude and Fugue in B BWV892, French Overture in B minor BWV831 - Bach. Ordre 22 - François Couperin. Pavanne In F Sharp Minor - Louis Couperin. Allemande, Courante La de Croissy - Armand-Louis Couperin

At first sight the second concert of the East Cork Early Music Festival seemed as conventional as they come, a balance to the wilder shores of the first and some of those to follow.

In the splendid dining room of Fota House, Malcolm Proud played harpsichord music by 17th- and 18th-century German and French composers. But this music makes its mark by turning convention topsy-turvy - and how. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B BWV892 (Book II of the "48") juxtaposes modern, galant-style floridity and the most intellectual, conservative, vocal-style fugue.

To levels far beyond his suites and partitas for keyboard, Bach's French Overture in B minor BWV831 (Clavierübung II) makes rugged, German counterpoint subvert the regularity of his French-style dance models.

In Louis Couperin's Pavanne in F sharp minor, the most radical kind of chromatic exploration piggybacks onto an old-style, almost seamless slow dance. The Ordre 22, by Loius's nephew François, steps beyond the French traditions of character-piece and dance by creating a decorative surface over a sophistication of technique that would satisfy the most demanding highbrow.

Finally, the baroque-cum-classical textures of Armand-Louis Couperin, written shortly before the French Revolution, were a perfect epitaph for a great style, just before the order it represented was swept away.

Proud trod these stylistic boundaries with deceptive ease, pointing out just enough to make the point while allowing things to speak for themselves. The luminous sounds of the Michael Johnson harpsichord were ideal for the French music in particular. Festival continues until Sunday  Martin Adams

Raphaël Oleg & Artur Pizzaro

NTL Studio, Belfast

Violin Sonata - Ravel. Violin Sonata No 1 - Prokofiev. Tzigane - Ravel

Just two days after the end of the recent series of BBC Invitation Concerts featuring the Ulster Orchestra, a new series of Sunday-afternoon recitals, also free, has begun at the NTL Studio, also for BBC Radio.

Although the preoccupation with Russian music may perplex some, it is justified in this case by the Prokofiev anniversary. Raphaël Oleg had played Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto in the final concert of the Ulster Orchestra series, so it was interesting to hear him in the much more intimate NTL Studio.

One was struck by the dark, lustrous tone, so effective in the brooding opening movement of Prokofiev's First Sonata. There was an extraordinary range of tone and attack and nuance, all of it enhancing the emotional range of one of Prokofiev's finest pieces. Artur Pizzaro, on piano, was a considerate partner, never overwhelming the violin even in the heavily pianistic textures of the sonata's second movement.

The Ravel sonata brings more limpid textures but is hardly less technically demanding, at least for the violinist. Once again the music brought forth a positive interpretation, geared to the more subtle character of the piece.

Ravel's Tzigane is primarily a display piece for the violin. Oleg's tone at the start was intense, but for the most part it avoided the scratchiness sometimes heard in this piece (and which I have never heard in recordings of Hungarian gypsy players).  Dermot Gault