National Concert Hall
Martin Adams
Italian Girl in Algiers Overture - Rossini
Mont Juic Suite (excs) - Britten/Berkeley
Danse Bohemienne - Bizet
Everything Passes - Rhona Clarke
Variations on La ci darem la mano - Chopin
Lemminkainen's Return
TUESDAY'S lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall, given by the RTE Concert Orchestra, included the premiere of a new composition - a welcome though rare event for this annual series. Rhona Clarke's Everything Passes is a onemovement work in which layered textures are defined by orchestral colour, and the melodic and harmonic styles are on the conservative side of this composer's practice. It has ideas, which I would like to hear again in a more connected performance, for deficiencies in that area were the concert's main limitation.
The conductor, Derek Gleeson, could muster playing of considerable rhythmic force; but he was more concerned with the moment than with large-scale shape and drive. The beat seemed more important than metre.
Under these confinements Sibelius's Lemminkainen's Return had plenty of big gestures, but was crude in its failure to set them in their ample context. The orchestral accompaniment in Chopin's Variations on La ci darem la mano was scrappy and rather aimless.
Nevertheless, Conor Linehan's piano playing in the Chopin was one of the best things in the concert. His shaping of the florid solo part avoided the obvious aspects of digital virtuosity, and was impressive in its sound musicianship and purposeful, pliant shaping.
The best orchestral performances included Britten's two movements from the Mont Juic Suite (Lennox Berkeley wrote the others). The direct energy of this youthful music came across well. Best of all was a straightforward and lively performance of Rossini's Italian Girl in Algiers Overture.
