Smale, RTÉ NSO/Pearce

NCH, Dublin.

Jerome de Bromhead – Venti Eventi. John Buckley – Campane in Aria. Jerome de Bromhead – Violin Concerto.

THE RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's Horizonsconcert on Tuesday followed a number of conventions. The three works were played in chronological order of composition. They were also ordered to afford the maximum in terms of stylistic contrast. Yet the effect of the whole was anything but ordinary.

Jerome de Bromhead's 1978 Venti Eventiwas written in 1978, the year the then 32-year-old composer studied with Italian composer Franco Donatoni. In one sense it's a piece very much of its time: angular, loose, off-centre. But, along with its jagged motion, and sounds of wood on string (whether from bouncing bows or slapped pizzicato), it also shows elements of an espressivo style that was anything but fashionable in the 1970s. The mixture, which probably made the piece sound less than up-to-the minute at the time, now provides a kind of balance that seems more than welcome.

The balance tilted in the opposite direction in the most recent work, de Bromhead's 2008 Violin Concerto, which was being heard for the first time. The composer describes it as "a fundamentally lyrical work", and he seems to have gone out of his way to ensure the violin soloist does not get unduly overpowered by the sound of the orchestra – at least that's how soloist Alan Smale and conductor Colman Pearce conveyed it.

Yet the orchestral writing does get dense and cluttered, as if there’s an almost independent, multilayered commentary (or even a multitude of independent commentaries) going on within the orchestra. On first hearing it’s a disorienting effect, the solo violin’s lyrical urgings offset against a crowded and sometimes murky background. The overall effect is downbeat neo-romantic, and the brief fanfare-like outburst which opens the finale quickly subsides, and the movement suggests any number of possible endings before choosing a violinistic colour as a solution.

By contrast with de Bromhead's two pieces, John Buckley's Campane in Aria,commissioned for a 2006 concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the National Concert Hall, sounds almost like an exercise in orchestral bling. The piece is a benign riot of sound – bubbly, explosive, full of careening lines and coloured in bright, bold strokes – a little orchestral rocket.