Coriolan Overture - Beethoven
Violin Concerto - Beethoven
Symphony No 2 - Beethoven
If plans proceed according to schedule, in two years' time the RTE Concert Orchestra will become the orchestra in residence at the new 1,200-seat concert hall at the University Arts Centre in Dublin City University. The big question remains: what will the orchestra actually do when it's got the home base and performing space that it's always longed for?
As things stand, the RTECO seems ill-prepared to take up the new challenge. Its diet is diverse, but unhealthily so, and as a consequence its playing is extremely variable, leaving it in a position of being jack of all trades and master of none.
Old problems of a different nature have surfaced in the new "Masterworks" series, six NCH concerts taking over the Friday night slot while the NSO attends to the Wexford Festival. The RTECO here finds itself presenting as "popular classics" a number of works which are anything but - Weill's Violin Concerto and Second Symphony, concert overtures by Sullivan, and Debussy's L'enfant prodigue.
Honesty of marketing was not an issue when George Hurst conducted the opening all-Beethoven programme at the NCH on Friday. Hurst, a onetime principal conductor of the NSO (he resigned 15 months into his contract in 1991), has a long-established reputation as an orchestral trainer. The justification of that reputation, as well as the need for a firm hand like his, were both well revealed in Friday's concert.
The RTECO is an orchestra which likes to play in what you might call the comfort zone, making the sounds that are easiest to produce (usually from moderately loud upwards, and with communal dynamics) at speeds that, for similar reasons, tend to be on the fast side.
Hurst is not a man to tolerate slovenliness, and he imposed instead a rigorous musical order which, while not free of some damaging flaws in delivery, imposed a grasp of scale as well as detail that's rare in RTECO concerts.
Dong-Suk Kang, the soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, didn't really command the necessary visionary grandeur for the opening movement and sounded altogether finer in the central Larghetto. But this was really the conductor's - and the orchestra's - night. Through all three works what was offered was cogent, strongly-expressed Beethoven playing. Hurst will be back again in another all-Beethoven programme on Friday, November 3rd.
