{TABLE} Overture and Pifa (Messiah)................ Handel Suite No 3 in D............................ Bach Concerto in D.............................. Tartini Brandenburg Concerto No 3.................. Bach Concerto Grosso No 12...................... Corelli Concerto in G.............................. Nardini Water Music Suite No 1..................... Handel {/TABLE} THE first concert in this year's "Campus Classics" series, presented by RTE in association with The Irish Times, took place on Thursday night at the O'Reilly Hall, UCD. It was a good programme of 18th-century music, and not just for including some top-rank Bach and Handel. How often do we hear a complete Corelli concerto; and two rarities - concertos by Nardini and his much more famous teacher, Tartini - were worth hearing.
The soloist was the virtuoso flautist, Marzio Conti. Both pieces are transcriptions of violin concertos, and Conti's superb tone and technique were memorably displayed by the almost-rococo elaborations of the Tartini and by the early Classical floridity of the Nardini.
The RTECO has no pretensions towards historical authenticity. But its middle-
ground approach, with characterisation and immediate communication well to the fore, has its own rewards. Every piece on the programme had elements of concerto style, and the many wind and string solos were confident and apt. I enjoyed the first suite from Handel's Water Music, and the Overture, Air and Gigue from Bach's Suite No. 3 in D, at least as much as in some more polished, historical-style recordings.
For me, however, the concert's highlight came before the interval, when just 11 players gave a cracking performance of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3. John Creedon, the concert's ebullient presenter, said that the RTECO's conductor, Proinnsias O Duinn, had described this piece as "a chin-wag between strings". That's exactly what it was full of life and of enjoyment at making superb music together
. Campus Classics continues when the RTECO plays at the O'Reilly Hall, UCD on Thursday 30th January and at Dundalk RTC on Friday 31st.
