St Michael’s Dún Laoghaire

THE ANNUAL summer recital series on the Rieger organ of St Michael’s Church in Dún Laoghaire likes to offer a number of evenings that combine other instruments or voices with the organ.

Last Sunday’s programme, given by Carole O’Connor, the organist of St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, had a double addition, with Roger Moffatt on percussion and Anne-Marie O’Farrell on harp.

And towards the end of the recital there was a third add-on, when the flashing lights and siren-like effects of an alarm intruded.

O’Connor bravely played on, though the plaintive pulsations of Bach’s Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV639, were rather overwhelmed by the 21st-century technology.

O'Connor offered a wide-ranging choice of music and opted for a sequence that made much of high contrasts – a dazzling Buxtehude Toccata(the one in D minor, BuxWV155) followed by a sober set of variations by Sweelinck, a slitheringly chromatic scherzo by Reger, followed by well-anchored passacaglia by Cabanilles, Bach's calm Ich ruf zu dirfollowed by the broad wit and moto-perpetuo busyness of Sportive Faunsby the New York-based Hungarian Reger pupil, Dezsö Antalffy-Zsiross.

Her playing was spirited, a little untidy before she fully settled down, and sounded at its best in the Bach (before the interruption) and the weighty steadiness of the Cabanilles.

The two works that called on all three players were both Irish: Brian Boydell's Confrontations in a Cathedralof 1986 and Anne-Marie O'Farrell's The Lauding Ear, which was receiving its premiere.

Both pieces clearly set out to make an impression, with Boydell sounding at times as if he wanted to emulate the effects of pieces that were so popular in the 1960s, and O'Farrell reaching out into the audience with processionals (for carried percussion and strapped-on harp) at the opening and closing of The Lauding Ear(the title of which is derived from an imprecise anagram of Dún Laoghaire).

Confrontations in a Cathedralis limited by the rather too gauche style of its percussion writing, and the most idiomatic sounding moments in the piece came from the harp.

O’Farrell made rather more of the colouristic potential of the unusual combination, although her tasteful and effective writing was actually less adventurous in spirit than Boydell’s.