Proinnsias O Duinn has been principal conductor of the RTE Concert Orchestra for 21 of its 52 years of existence. Such long collaborations are rare in the orchestral world, and this one was celebrated at the National Concert Hall on Thursday night.
The air of determined bonhomie was whipped along by Bill Golding's quick-fire presentation, while four soloists - Joan Merrigan (soprano), Damian Smith (baritone), Micheal O'Brien (uilleann pipes) and Philip Martin (piano) - contributed to a programme which exemplified many of the genres in which the RTECO works. It included light opera, musicals, opera (a duet from Don Pasquale) and symphonic music with Irish traditional instruments (a movement from The Brendan Voyage). There were also Reizenstein's overclever spoof of every famous piano concerto, plus two pieces by ias O Duinn himself.
The spoken tributes to O Duinn were warm, for this man is responsible, above all others, for the RTECO's development from a studio-based orchestra to the concert and touring orchestra it is today. He has shown a willingness to explore, to take risks and to do things which were probably not possible 20 years ago.
Repertoire has expanded to include mainstream orchestral works, a few of which were on this programme. But for me ECO concerts - and I suspect for many of the musicians, the changes were epitomised in the performance, by 10 string players, of the finale of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3.