Super phonic

Nothing Forgotten (1997) - Hilary Tann

Partita for Paul (1985) - Arne Nordheim

Fuga Interna (11-Sequence) - Katharine Norman

Odd Moments (1999) - Paul Lansky

All the works in the recent concert in the Hugh Lane Gallery were receiving their first performance in Ireland; Katharine Norman's piece, commissioned by Concorde, has not been heard in public before.

Nothing Forgotten, for violin, cello and piano, is inspired by the landscape of the Adirondacks where Hilary Tann now lives. The music is slightly indebted to the folk song of the region; this brings it an unexpected tunefulness though it cannot suggest the feel of the place as vividly as the water-colours of Winslow Homer. Music's powers of description are limited.

Visual impressions also lie behind Arne Nordheim's Partita for Paul; not the landscapes of his native Norway, but the paintings of Paul Klee, exhibited in Oslo in 1985. The Partita is for solo violin; in the last two of its five movements the violin, after a delay, plays against a recording of itself. The effect is rather odd but so were the original pictures. The first three movements, free of the Hugh Lane echo, were played with commendable vigour by Elaine Clarke.

Katharine Norman introduced her own Fuga Interna 11 (for piano, flute, clarinet, cello and electronic sounds) by telling us how much and how often she loved to play the last fugue of Book 1 of the "48". Her work is a response to this experience. The connection with Bach would not be audible to the listener were it not for what sounds like a brief quotation towards the end of the 14 minute piece; its aim is to experiment with sonorities, not to develop polyphony.

Paul Lansky works in the electronic medium; Odd Moments, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano is his first ensemble work for instruments alone in 25 years. The audience was promised a lively work, but it rather plodded along, like a perpetuum mobile played very slowly. It was accessible, certainly, but went on for too long with a sort of minimalist fervour.