Review

A recent performance by the RTE NSO at the NCH in Dublin.

Collins, Collins, RTÉ NSO/Caetani

NCH, Dublin

Weber -Oberon Overture

Mendelssohn -Concerto in E for two pianos

Schubert -Symphony No 9 in C (Great)

Strictly speaking, Schubert's Great C major Symphony is a symphony without an actual slow movement. The marking of the second movement, Andante con moto, suggests the brisker end of a walking pace rather than a slow movement proper, and the Andante of the introduction to the first movement need not be taken as slowly as it is by most conductors.

Oleg Caetani, who made his debut with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra on Friday, has a diverse and golden pedigree. He studied conducting with his father Igor Markevitch, as well as Nadia Boulanger, Franco Ferrara, Kyrill Kondrashin and Ilya Musin.

He came across as a conductor of strong and individual ideas and in the Schubert he certainly seemed happy to deliver the brisker end of most of the options available to him.

He kept the music on a tight rein, the rhythms often seeming stiff rather than sprung, and the result was a fascinatingly modern-sounding Schubert. The effusiveness of the writing - the "heavenly length" that Schumann so famously commented on - was handled in a way that almost made the piece sound proto-minimalistic.

Finghín and Dearbhla Collins were the soloists in the 14-year- old Mendelssohn's Two-Piano Concerto in E. The two Collinses negotiated its rapid scales with ease as well as with the kind of effortless-seeming co-ordination that seems to be the preserve of siblings in a medium where simply getting everything together is notoriously difficult.

As with the Schubert symphony, Caetani downplayed romantic expressiveness in Weber's Oberon Overture for a performance which was limited in both lyricism and fire. - Michael Dervan