{TABLE} Prelude: Hansel and Gretel ........... Humperdinck Peer Gynt Suite No 1 ................. Grieg Rococo variations .................... Tchaikovsky Italian Symphony ..................... Mendelssohn {/TABLE} ONE of the best things in the RTE Concert Orchestra's concert at the O'Reilly Hall, UCD, on Thursday night, was Annette Cleary's playing of the solo cello part in Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. Her performance had a range of tone and an easy shaping of line which suited this elegant yet passionate piece, the occasional technical slip notwithstanding.
The programme for this concert, the second in the "Campus Classics" series, included one work which might have been unfamiliar, the Prelude to Humperdinck's opera Hanset and Gretel. Full of memorable tunes, this is music which needs plenty of tone, or at least, a tone richer than was produced on this occasion. The RTECO can produce that richness, but it must be difficult in the O'Reilly Hall's unforgiving acoustic.
In Grieg's first Peer Gynt Suite there was some nice solo work from the wind, and everyone produced some really snappy playing in Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. Yet this performance typified the concert's limitations, in that it rarely achieved that consistent quality which the many good details suggested were possible. In the finale, for example, conductor Proinnsias O Duinn set a spanking pace and ensemble was tight. The result was plenty of bustle but not much long range drive. It was not quite frustrating but it was tantalising.
