Dublin 2000 - A Celebration - Philip Martin

Writing commissioned, celebratory music can be dangerous. Even Purcell, Mozart and Britten achieved their best and their worst in such endeavours. To celebrate the Millennium, Dublin Chamber of Commerce commissioned Philip Martin to write a large-scale piece. On the whole, he met the challenge.

Dublin 2000 - A Celebration was given an efficient and sympathetic premiere at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday night by the RTE Concert Orchestra, the National Chamber Choir and soloists Franzita Whelan (soprano), Colette McGahon (mezzo soprano) and Ian Caddy (baritone). The conductor was Proinnsias O Duinn.

Philip Martin chose texts which reflect the historical, present and future aspects of his native Dublin, its dark and its bright sides. In this he was helped, he said, by the constant re-assessment which comes from living outside Ireland (in England) and visiting regularly. He drew on traditional verse, as well as writers including Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Eavan Boland and Pearse.

There are pitfalls a-plenty in collating disparate texts into around 100 minutes of music and 23 sections. Martin avoids most of them. Only occasionally does he strive to be too profound or magnificent, though the last few minutes exemplified the latter, for their material is not up to such grandiloquent statement. Nor is he too flippant. His extensive use of strophic structure and of variation techniques is appropriate and the conservative-modern, quasi-modal vocabulary is suitable for music which, given its patron, needs to be accessible.

This piece - and much of Martin's music - bears analogies with Copland. He does not have the force or individuality of that most-American composer. But like Copland, Martin knows how to avoid condescension when using popular material, even Molly Malone! Give him the job; he will deliver the goods.