Overture: Marriage of Figaro - Mozart

Symphonette no.2 - Gould

Organ Concerto - Poulenc

Dance of the Hours - Ponchielli

At the last of RTE's Summer lunchtime concerts until next year, the Concert Orchestra was conducted, not by its Principal Conductor, Prionnsias O Duinn, but by Colman Pearce. The programme was the usual mixture of the grave and the gay, with the gay predominating. Indeed, so cheerful were the works by Mozart, Gould and Ponchielli, that Poulenc's Organ Concerto, which aims at a higher seriousness, seemed a stranger at the feast. Michael Quinn at the organ made the rafters shake as he brought Poulenc's empathetic scoring to life, a scoring that makes the band, limited to strings and timpani, a decorative adjunct to the solo part. The composer considered that the Concerto occupied an important place in his output, next to his religious music, but I doubt if posterity will support that estimate.

The brass and percussion sections had an outing in Morton Gould's brash and jazzy Symphonette No.2. It lacks the subtlety of Copland's exercises in a similar idiom but is bursting with vigour and is understandably popular.

Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours, familiar to many from Walt Disney's Fantasia, has such catchy tunes that its continued popularity is no surprise, and the RTECO milked it for all it was worth.