Symphony No 44 (Trauer) - Haydn
Nocturne - John Kinsella
Grosse Fuge - Beethoven
Divertimento in D K251 - Mozart
If you had to draw up a shortlist of repertoire poorly served in concert in Ireland, the music of the major figures of the classical period would feature high on the list. If the Irish Chamber Orchestra had set out to remedy the situation, they could hardly have made a better start than the programme they are currently touring under Gunter Pichler.
Pichler's conducting was so sensitive about light and shade, and acutely responsive in the delicacy of its phrase-shaping, that the venue was presumably being heard in a most flattering light. Pichler is one of those conductors who finds a way of aerating Haydn and Mozart, maintaining a dancing spring in the fast movements, and an unforced, unsentimental linear tensility in the slow ones.
John Kinsella's firmly tonal Nocturne, arranged from the slow movement of his Second Violin Concerto, has an almost modern Baltic feel to it, but without the textural distinctiveness one associates with the Baltic school.
Beethoven's Grosse Fuge was a tour-de-force in Pichler's reading but didn't quite have the monumentality that the best performances bring to it.
The audience reserved its greatest enthusiasm for the closing Mozart Divertimento, played with subtle poise and alertness, and a real sense of pleasure in music that's by no means easy to deliver convincingly in concert.
Pichler and the ICO brought it off with carefree ease.
Tour details from unter Pichler tours to Wexford, Dublin, Kilkenny, Fethard, Limerick and Tuosist. Phone 061- 202620.
