Orchestra of St Cecilia/Geoffrey Spratt

Four Seasons - Vivaldi Symphony No 7 (Le Midi) - Haydn

The second of the three summer concerts by the Orchestra of St Cecilia, given at St Ann's, Dawson Street, last Wednesday, was altogether less even in achievement than the first.

There were just two works on the programme, Vivaldi's ever-popular Four Seasons, with the young Dublin violinist, Gillian Williams, as soloist, and Haydn's Symphony No. 8, the second in the composer's Matin/Midi/Soir sequence.

Gillian Williams, currently best-known as a member of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, gave an outgoing account of the Vivaldi, enjoyably gutsy, if limited in style and rather narrow in expressive range. The effectiveness of her playing was hemmed in by orchestral partnership of little lightness or transparency.

Conductor Geoffrey Spratt's approach to the Haydn was heavy-handed, too. In a work with so many solos it was surprising how much he managed to blur the distinction between foreground and background, and also how often he allowed the players to linger in those middle ranges where contrasts of dynamic and articulation are so difficult to attain.

There were, to be sure, moments where a sort of generalised breeziness boded well. But early Haydn, even in the richly-inventive mode of this symphony, needs more than moments of promise to keep it fully alive.