Reminders of the good old days at Kilkenny

The audience response to classical music at the arts festival shows the potential is there to rebuild its reputation, writes Michael Dervan.

This time last year there was a case for wondering if the classical music strand in Kilkenny Arts Festival had degenerated into a kind of work-experience course for young musicians. More than half the events were based around mentoring schemes, and the rewards seemed greater for those on stage than for the audience.

To be sure there were concerts by the Callino Quartet and a solo recital by percussionist Colin Currie. But there was also the unfortunate Woodstock performance of Handel's Fireworks Music by an inadequately small, amplified band, with, at the end of a mis-managed evening, the fireworks completely stealing the show. A major re-examination of musical priorities was clearly what the festival needed.

This year, by contrast, there were reminders of the good old days for classical music at Kilkenny. St Canice's Cathedral was thronged for performances by Jeffrey Skidmore's choir, Ex Cathedra, of musical programmes not otherwise available in Ireland. Their first concert consisted of just one work, Rachmaninov's Vespers. The second, billed as a Latin American Vespers, was a sequence of music by composers active in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay in the 17th and 18th centuries, for which the singers were joined by an instrumental ensemble based around the QuintEssential Sackbut and Cornett Ensemble. Skidmore and his choir made quite a splash two years ago, with their first CD foray into the little-known world of early music in Latin America. That disc, New World Symphonies, has now been followed by another, Moon, Sun and All Things, which formed the basis of the Kilkenny concert.

The music, by a range of little-known composers, is immediate in its appeal. The musical traffic between the old world and the new was clearly of an order which means that no one need think of lowering their musical sights when listening to the works that Skidmore has collected. His sequence of music includes popular material, too, of that percussion-rich, toe-tapping kind that was so popular in the early days of the early music revival.

These performances had genuine verve, the choir clearly enjoying the bouncy popular tunes (interpolated with yelps and cries of encouragement) every bit as much as the polychoral items. The evening was topped and tailed with processions, and included a number of other well-brought-off theatrical effects.

If you think about it, it's most unlikely that a choir geared to stylish singing of the work of early Latin American composers would find an equally authentic voice for a music steeped in the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Similarly, you probably wouldn't expect a choir steeped in that tradition to negotiate early Latin American music with the skills of Ex Cathedra. And so it was. Rachmaninov's all-night vigil, or Vespers, was a huge success when it was first heard in 1915, and it has remained a work with an aura so special that it always comes as a shock to realise it was written by the virtuoso composer of a string of arch-romantic piano concertos, symphonies and solo piano works.

As with much of Rachmaninov's best music, the piece was written quickly - in two weeks - and although his favourite among his own works was his cantata, The Bells (bells were a lifelong obsession), he thought highly enough of the fifth movement of the Vespers to want it sung at his funeral. Ex Cathedra delivered the music with exquisite care on Friday, everything conscientiously shaped, balanced and judged, the bass voices managing to reach the extreme depths (including low B flats) to which Rachmaninov sends them.

But the emotional core of the music remained cool. The singing was, if anything, too tidy, too well disciplined. The requisite weight of massed voices, the sense of amplitude in the surges of the phrasing did not appear to be part of Ex Cathedra's conception of how this music goes. It is to the credit of the composer - and of course the performers - that the music remained absorbing when communicated with a flavour so far removed from anything Rachmaninov is likely to have had in mind.

Thursday's lunchtime concert of Venetian music by the QuintEssential Sackbut and Cornett Ensemble was a serious disappointment. The group's difficulties with intonation and articulation (not to mention the simple challenge of making sure the right people were at the right music stands at the right time) were here in complete contrast to their assured work in the programme with Ex Cathedra.

The lunchtime organ recital by Benjamin Bayl was cancelled, and I was unable to see the closing concert by the Irish Consort. But the indications are that the festival has once again established a basis on which to rebuild its musical reputation and audience. There was a time when the Kilkenny music programme was a jewel in the crown of festival activity in Ireland.

Although it is now seriously trimmed back in scale and scope - still, for instance, running to only half the number of events it had at its peak -this year's successes show clearly that there's an audience ready and waiting should the festival decide to reach out to it once again with imaginative fare.