{TABLE} Symphony No 73 (La Chasse) ........ Haydn Horn Concertos 2 & 1 .............. Mozart Symphony No 5 ..................... Schubert {/TABLE} WITH the National Symphony Orchestra due to play at the Hong Kong Summer Festival next month, the players' holidays have been swapped from August to July. Their place at RTE's July tea time concerts has been filled by a number of ensembles, and last Friday it was the turn of the Orchestra of St Cecilia, who played a programme of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert under Barry Tuckwell.
Tuckwell, who was 65 earlier this year, has had a distinguished career as orchestral player (most notably with the London Symphony Orchestra, where he also served a period as chairman), soloist, chamber musician and, latterly, conductor.
His handling of the symphonies by Haydn and Schubert on Friday was fluid and easygoing, conversational in true chamber music style. The players of the Orchestra of St Cecilia (quite a few of them familiar faces from the NSO!) responded with a degree of well balanced poise and point which has not always been a feature of their playing in the past.
Barry Tuckwell's longevity as a horn player is a matter of wonder and the preservation of his technique remarkable (Joseph Leutgeb, for whom Mozart wrote his horn concertos, is believed to have retired from playing before he was 50, and it has even been suggested that the choice of a lower key for the final, incomplete concerto was intended to facilitate his declining powers).
It would be idle to pretend that Tuckwell's control is still everything it once was (the greatest change manifests itself in moments of unexpected angularity). But there's still a level of command many a player half his age would be glad of, and the audience's enthusiastic response to his playing of two Mozart concertos (K417 and K412) showed a very special appreciation of a player who, like few others, has flown the flag for horn music and horn playing in our century.
