Arts Review

Douglas Sealy reviews a performance of Dublin City Concert Orchestra

Alison Hood (piano), Dublin City Concert Orchestra/Eimear Noone National Concert Hall, Dublin

Overture, Coriolan   Beethoven

Symphony No 45 (Farewell)   Haydn

In The Steppes Of Central Asia    Borodin

Piano Concerto   Grieg

Dublin City Concert Orchestra, now a year and a half old, took the daring step of presenting a programme of popular classics last Saturday.

The selection almost guaranteed a favourable reception, but the sheer familiarity of the music made comparisons with other performances inevitable - and the band did not emerge unscathed. A sense of caution, even of tentativeness, robbed the pieces of much of their dynamism, and the performances as a whole were subject to rhythmic inertness.

There was more drama than accuracy in Beethoven's Coriolan, and the individual contributions to Borodin's In The Steppes Of Central Asia, though good in themselves, did not coalesce into a persuasive whole.

If these pieces were being heard for the first time, one's interest would have been whetted; it is no surprise that they are popular, but their popularity demands a more finished performance.

The finale of Haydn's Farewell Symphony, in which the players gradually leave the stage until only two are left, is a theatrical master stroke, but this would have been emphasised if the conductor had brought greater lightness and vivacity to the preceding movements.

Alison Hood, the soloist in Grieg's Piano Concerto, in those passages in which she led the orchestra, gave a much needed spring to the playing, and when the composer forgot that he was trying to emulate Liszt and scaled down the music to his more characteristic gentle lyricism, she played with just the right amount of feeling.