Berenice Suite - Handel

Canon and Gigue - Pachelbel

Oboe d'Amore Concerto - Bach

Suite No 3, BWV 1068 - Bach

Royal Fireworks Music - Handel

This year's "Campus Classics" concert series got off to a good start at UCD on Wednesday, when the RTECO was directed by Paul Goodwin, the English early-music oboist and conductor. The orchestra's characteristic vigour was combined with some of the best things in historical performance practice, especially clear part-writing and pointed phrasing and rhythm.

This was one of the main strengths in the performance of Bach's Oboe d'Amore Concerto. Ruby Ashley was the soloist in this demanding piece - the lost, but now reconstructed, original version of the Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1055. She was especially impressive in the long-spun lines of the slow movement and it was a pleasure to hear a concerto played with such mutual awareness between conductor, soloist and orchestra.

This was one of those concerts in which the effects of occasional flaws were fully eclipsed by consistent musicality and committed characterisation. The rhythmic life in Pachelbel's famous Canon was a welcome change from the usual sentimental lugubriousness; and it was good to hear it paired with the Gigue.

The various dance movements in Bach's Suite No. 3 (BWV 1068) and Handel's Ber- enice Suite (compiled by the conductor from that and other Handel operas) were excellently contrasted. Goodwin's conducting enabled players to discourse as parts imitated each other. His timing - in pacing individual pieces, judg ing the contrasts between tempos and timing the gaps between movements - showed a sure feel for drama. The results were especially potent in Handel's Music for the Royal Fire- works, which brought the evening to a rousing close.

Campus Classics continues on Wednesday January 28th at the same venue (6.30 p.m.)