National Chamber Choir of Ireland/Colin Mawby

Music by Ravel, Poulenc, Colin Mawby, Kevin O'Connell, Arvo Part, and Eibhlis Farrell

Stravinsky once said he could tolerate unaccompanied choirs only in harmonically primitive music. Although this would seem to let out his own Dove Descending, one can see what he meant; no other type of musical performance is so vulnerable to tuning problems.

A slight lack of definition or uneasiness of intonation pervaded the first half of Sunday's concert, which was given as part of a BBC series and as part of Queen's University's Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, and this uncertainty inhibited the musical expression. The assurance, smoothness of tone, and range of expression one expects from this group remained elusive.

Colin Mawby's Holstian Divine Image and Rostrevor-born Eibhlis Farrell's O Rubor Sanguinis are both deeply felt works with some memorable phrases but they failed to come alive. I also began to miss the harmonic warmth of Ravel's Trois Chansons. Kevin O'Connell's All the Live Long Way, a setting of Beckett's Sanies I, displays inventiveness and empathy with the author, but did not persuade one this text needs or gains from musical setting.

Luckily, things changed with Arvo Part's Seven Magnificats. Here at last was the technical security and feeling for the music we had been missing. The almost drastic simplicity of Part's hieratic style helped, of course. The final Poulenc, Exultate Deo, displayed a conviction missing from his earlier Vinea Mea Electa.