National Gallery, Dublin

Bach

– Brandenburg Concerto No 1.

Vivaldi

– Violin Concerto in C, RV180 (Il piacere).

Handel

– Concerto Grosso in F Op 3 No 4.

Vivaldi

– Violin Concerto in E flat RV253 (La tempesta di mare).

It sounds like a totally crazy undertaking. The six concerts of the Irish Baroque Orchestra's Masterworksseries at the National Gallery will feature nothing but concertos. Twenty-four of them, in fact, four per programme.

But, then, the concertos are by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, and the 18th-century baroque concerto is anything but the romantic 19th-century tussle between valiant soloist and mighty orchestra. One of the points of the IBO’s series is the sheer diversity of the concerto in the baroque era.

That diversity is nowhere better expressed than in the set of six Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, each of which presents an utterly distinctive sound world. Like John Eliot Gardiner, who committed the Brandenburgs to disc for the first time last year, the IBO’s director, violinist Monica Huggett, sees the first of the set as a clash between instruments of different associations, a conflict between court and country.

It’s a view which gives the hunting horns a licence to let go and bray competitively, so that, although they are small in number (just two), they can dominate the rest of the ensemble.

The IBO’s playing, in that edgily driven style that Huggett is so fond of, had a consistently exciting edge.

Each of the six Masterworks programmes is featuring a pair of concertos from Vivaldi's Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (The Trial of Harmony and Invention), the set of concertos which includes The Four Seasons.

This programme offered Nos 5 and 6, La tempesta di mare,with Huggett as the daredevil, rocketing soloist, and Il piacere, with Hannah Tibell offering violin playing of altogether milder and more poised musical temperament.

The Handelian offering in this concert was the Concerto Grosso in F, Op 3 No 4, a work that’s commanding and contained, demonstrative without being overly showy, and, with playing to match, it offered the best music-making of the evening.

The Irish Baroque Orchestra’s Masterworks series continues at the National Gallery tonight at 6pm