{TABLE} Divertimento in D K136 ............ Mozart Ulysses Awakes .................... John Woolrich Serenade for Strings .............. Elgar Concerto for two violin RV 522 .... Vivaldi Serenade for Strings .............. Tchaikovsky {/TABLE} A forceful display of orchestral virtuosity ended the AIB Music Festival in Great Irish Houses on Saturday night.
The London Chamber Orchestra is a group of 14 string players directed from the first desk by Christopher Warren Green. In their concert in St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle, their virtuosity was both startling and unrelenting. However, it suggested that music making was driven less by the desire to explore the music's finer points than by the players' enjoyment of what they can do.
They can do a lot. In the serenades for Strings by Elgar and Tchaikovsky, the range of colour and volume was extraordinary, and the precision arresting.
Yet, in the Elgar especially, the playing lacked warmth and breadth, largely because of the tendency to overemphasise dynamic contrasts and to over project detail. In both serenades, the result was rather frustrating. So was a hard driven account of Mozart's Divertimento in D K136.
Some of the most consistently persuasive music making came in Ulysses A wakes, a recomposition by the English composer John Woolrich of part of Act I of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'lisse in patria. The solo viola, representing the voice of Ulysses, was beautifully played by Roger Chase, and the orchestra's skills with colour and tight dialogue were especially effective in shaping the free upper parts.
In Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins RV 522, the soloists, Christopher Warren Green and Rosemary Furiss, played with supercharged energy. Their extravagant flair was in many ways suited to this extravagantly florid piece.