The last concert in this year's Friday-lunchtime orchestral series at the National Concert Hall was also the first time Dermot Dunne conducted the RTE Concert Orchestra. Since winning the RTE Musician of the Future competition in 1996, Dunne has acquired an international reputation as an accordion player of exceptional musicianship and technique. Whether he can make an equivalent impact in conducting remains uncertain.
In many respects this was a respectable and enjoyable concert. Ensemble was clean in most pieces, including the songs sung by Cara O'Sullivan (soprano), some of which were quite demanding. There was a good range of volume, balance was usually well-controlled and the RTECO's playing was incisive. The problem was that these components operated one-dimensionally, without interaction.
It was significant that one of the best performances was of Verdi's Forza del destino Overture, an accomplished pot-pourri which depends above all on local character. The connected structure of Smetana's Vltava needed more than that - driving over large spans, pointed contrasts between sections, and the flexibility to make some ideas more important than others. Dance movements like the waltz and polonaise from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin needed to breath, so that dancers could swirl and had time to lift a foot.
Cara O'Sullivan was a star in all her songs, except Strauss's Voices of Spring, where her agility was too forced. But she had everything else off to a tee, especially in capturing the hushed, deceptive simplicity without which Wallace's Scenes that are Brightest, from Maritana, falls flat.