Mahony Hall, the Helix, Dublin;  St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

Young musicians were to the fore last weekend. On Friday and Saturday, the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland performed in Limerick and Dublin. On the same days, plus Sunday, the Irish Youth Choir were in Cork, Limerick and Dublin. Both sets of concerts were the culmination of a week of intensive rehearsals.

One of the challenges for such groups is to aim high, to challenge the performers, yet to ensure an enjoyable experience. Saturday’s concert by the NYOI hit that balance well.

Played by a medium-sized group of strings and wind, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 2 featured a chamber-music kind of responsiveness between Sophie Cashell’s shapely solo playing and the orchestra. The conductor, Garry Walker, presented the players with style-specific challenges, especially in requiring the strings to play without vibrato. In the slow movement, that left nowhere to hide the odd blemish. Nevertheless, in this movement and in the drama of the finale, everyone played with a restrained yet engaging sense for what this music can achieve.

The full strength of around 94 players performed Mahler’s Symphony No 1. Even for professionals, this piece’s audacious orchestral writing has its scary moments. But these were delivered with conviction, and the warm acoustics of the Helix’s O’Mahony Hall helped to make this a performance in which the listeners could share in the exhilaration of forthright music-making.

On Sunday in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, the Irish Youth Choir presented unaccompanied choral music. A florid piece by Ciconia was convincingly done by a select group of 18 singers; and the full group of around 80, and their conductor Greg Beardsell, did well to deliver the

Officium Defunctorum

by Victoria with such a command of colour and volume, and a conviction that readily surmounted the odd technical flaw.

The programme included challenging part- songs by Mahler, and folk-song arrangements by Grainger. One of the latter was sensitively shaped and controlled by the IYC’s conductor in training, Amy Ryan. The whole concert was both a pleasure to listen to and a vindication of the choir’s musical aims and methods.