Overture Don Giovanni - Mozart
A mirror into the light we can see - Ian Wilson
What of the Light has fallen - John Buckley
Piano Concerto No 22 in E flat K 482 - Mozart
Concerto in E flat Dumbarton Oaks - Stravinsky
Symphony No 38 in D Prague - Mozart
Camerata Ireland was launched in April this year amid a barrage of publicity, with two semi-public concerts in Belfast and Dublin. The brainchild of soloist-conductor Barry Douglas, it aims to bring "the best musicians from Ireland" together several times a year for a few prestigious concerts. It also provides an outlet for Douglas's conducting ambitions.
One can't help being a bit sceptical, for an orchestra is a team, not a mere collection of players, however distinguished. Like any team it needs to be welded into a unit by constant practice. Only 21 out of the 37 players at this concert played in the inaugural concerts in April, and although the players themselves are good, the orchestra does not have the finesse that a chamber orchestra must. Douglas himself has become a more relaxed and assured conductor, but the Stravinsky and the Prague symphony chugged along mechanically, and Ian Wilson's interesting piece refused to flow. Douglas's piano playing immediately showed a technical grasp and an ability to communicate which his conducting does not begin to suggest. This was nevertheless rather soft-focus Mozart, with over-generous pedalling turning much of the first movement into impressionistic washes of sound, and the most interesting thing about the performance were the cadenzas by Benjamin Britten. Britten's explorations of Mozart's themes do not attempt to deny his own musical language, and if the results might not be what one would want to hear repeatedly on records, it was still fascinating.
