REVIEW

Ruiten, Butt, RTÉ NSO/MarksonNCH, Dublin Schubert - Symphony No 8 ("Unfinished"). Mozart - Exsultate, Jubilate. Tchaikovsky - Variations on a Rococo Theme. Ravel - Bolero

I WAS looking forward to hearing Lenneke Ruiten, and she did not disappoint. This Dutch soprano made a strong impression during her Irish tour last year, and in this concert she sang Mozart's lovely motet Exsultate, Jubilate, written for a virtuoso Italian singer when the composer was just 17.

Ruiten's singing was captivating. With no obvious effort, she met the legion of technical challenges, from sustained cantabile to florid coloratura. But above all other things was her deep musicality and her ability to make virtuosity serve expression. Like all true treats, it made you feel good.

The neat and well-defined orchestral contribution to that piece was sustained in Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, in which the cello soloist was William Butt. His impressive tonal variety and rhythmic flexibility contributed to making a performance that was always engaging and full of character.

The orchestral works that opened and closed this programme could hardly be more different from one another. Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony was played with a spaciousness that emphasised what has been described as this composer's "heavenly length". Ravel's Bolero is one of the most audacious pieces of orchestral music of all time. No piece of music is so driven by orchestration alone; and that, Ravel admitted, was his purpose. It sounds best if rigorous rhythm is combined with detail that has a certain sleazy sinuosity.

This performance had all that. Gerhard Markson conducted the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra as a co-ordinator, more than as a controller. At the end of this excellently sustained, 16-minute crescendo, the smiles among the musicians were a testimony to how the playing had been shaped by mutual awareness of exactly what should be done and how to do it.