Oberon - Overture - Weber

Jack in the Box - Satie arr. Milhaud

Concerto on themes from Donizetti's La Favorita - Pasculli

Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes - Copland

Weber's Oberon never quite lives up to its magical opening with the horns of Elfland faintly blowing; the dances of Oberon's court are 19th-century Viennese. Such stylistic considerations did not worry the composer any more than they did Proinsias O Duinn and the RTE Concert Orchestra at Tuesday's lunchtime concert in the NCH, where the work was performed with sensitivity and gusto.

Pasculli's showpiece for oboe, based on themes from Donizetti, was a feast of melody, both plain and decorated. Aisling Casey made her oboe sound like an extraordinarily pure and fluent singing voice. Her playing was so natural and unaffected that it transcended the superficial showiness of the composition.

The reputation of Satie seems to rest as much on his wit and eccentricity as his music. Jack in the Box (originally for piano solo) is a lightweight suite of nursery rhyme-type tunes and Milhaud's orchestration blows it up to bursting point. Copeland used some cowboy tunes in his Rodeo, but even if the plot of the ballet is as populist as the tunes, the treatment is highly sophisticated. The complexities of the colourful score were taken in their stride by the players and the noisy good humour of the work was never allowed to get out of control.