I must admit that the ghostly hymn-like passages near the close did make me sit up and take notice. But as a whole, the concerto strikes me as a gigantic pseudo-19th-century fake.Wolfgang Rihm's Time Chant of 1991-2, the other work Mutter played - like the Penderecki, intelligently and probingly, as well as ravishingly, and with an astonishing command of different timbres - feels more like the real thing. It incorporates beautifully ethereal moments as well as using its modest forces in a combustive, almost Varÿse-like way. Yet its message is ultimately dark, brooding and very Germanic."Thoroughly Modern Mutter", the soloist's own programme essay, suggests a mission to promote "colour and expression" in new music, and a refusal of "experiment" and the "purely intellectual statement".

Thankfully, that hasn't stopped her from commissioning Sofia Gubaidulina and even Boulez for the future. So there's hope yet that her contribution to the repertoire may move further away from its current dark, Romantic, symphonic - and, to some, the exact opposite of thoroughly modern - bias.. "All I want from the Catholic church is an apology - a long apology. And I hope they will understand when I refuse to accept it." So says Marco Delavicario, the young Italian-American GI in Dolly West's Kitchen, the latest play by Frank McGuinness. "All I want from the Catholic church is an apology - a long apology. And I hope they will understand when I refuse to accept it." So says Marco Delavicario, the young Italian-American GI in Dolly West's Kitchen, the latest play by Frank McGuinness. From his first play The Factory Girls, through Innocence and Carthaginians to Dolly West's Kitchen, (which was described on these pages as the hit of the Dublin Festival), McGuinness has set out to explore the social, political, and personal significance of human sexuality - gay, straight or other.

And his work has inevitably brought him into conflict with the virulent puritanism of Irish religious orthodoxy, both Protestant and Catholic. Indeed, he was actually denounced from the altar when Innocence - his play about the life of Caravaggio - opened in Dublin, and the deliberate cruelty of his treatment by the local clergy at his mother's own requiem mass is not easily forgotten.When the Abbey Theatre's production of McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme toured to the Belfast Opera House, the management arranged for a veteran of the Ulster Division to attend the first night After the show he was asked for his reaction. He did not hesitate: "There were no fruits at the Somme."With the notable exceptions of Oscar Wilde and Sir Roger Casement, gay men have been as invisible to Irish history as those invisible soldiers at the Somme They have also been mainly invisible to the Irish stage. But then, overt sexuality and eroticism have not featured prominently in the Irish repertoire.One of the more extraordinary aspects of recent events in Ireland has been the collapse of the political power of the Catholic Church after a wave of scandals over child abuse in church-run orphanages and industrial schools. And whatever the battle over divorce and contraception, both now legal in the Republic, the liberalising of anti-gay legislation was achieved with remarkable speed, and brought Ireland into line with Europe...

except for the UK that is, a country that, ironically, remains more illiberal and deliberately cruel in its legislation than the Republic.If McGuinness is courageous in his refusal to ignore the crucial importance of human sexuality, he does have some precedents in the Irish Theatre. The root cause of the famous Abbey Riots over The Playboy of the Western World was moral outrage on the part of an audience already primed by the powerful eroticism of The Well of the Saints. With O'Casey and The Plough and the Stars, the flashpoint came when the tricolour and the flag of the Citizen Army were carried into a pub - a pub where the prostitute Rosie Redmond is canoodling with Fluther Good in the snug. This, of course, was an affront to the nation and to the men of 1916. So they rioted.Two very remarkable Irish plays were produced in the late Sixties, one at the Gate Theatre and the other at the Abbey Neither caused a riot. One was Brian Friel's The Gentle Island, the other was Thomas Kilroy's The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche.