Symphony No 1 - Mozart
Oboe Concerto - Mozart
Jupiter Symphony - Mozart
The RTE Concert Orchestra is due to become the orchestra-in-residence at the new concert hall in DCU's University Arts Centre from April 2002. One of the challenges facing the orchestra in its new role will be that of developing its repertoire.
As things stand, the RTECO is in the position of jack of all trades and master of none. The small attendance at its all-Mozart programme on Thursday was a fairly predictable public response to the situation. Even the high profile of Roy Goodman as a stylish conductor of 18th-century music didn't generate a great deal of public interest in a fairly isolated foray into what should be part of the orchestra's core area of expertise.
As things turned out, the focus of greatest interest in the evening was the soloist in Mozart's Oboe Concerto. Aisling Casey, born in Cork in 1972, is currently assistant principal oboe with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in Amsterdam, and last year took the first prize in the Isle of Wight International Oboe Competition.
Her training was in Ireland and Germany, but her tone, happily, shows no signs of that excess of sweetness that can be found in even the highest echelons of German oboe playing. Her style in Mozart is natural and direct, the delivery easy and musical, the soloistic presence achieved without any forcing. Roy Goodman's is an athletic Mozart: brisk and sometimes quite hard-driven. I'm not sure he distilled all the charm that's to be found in the eight-year-old Mozart's First Symphony (particularly in the slow movement), though he did manage to invest the outer movements of the Jupiter Symphony with great energy. If I had to choose a single word to epitomise the RTECO's shortcomings in this sort of repertoire it would be "opaque". Goodman's urgings did result in some finer-than-usual detailing, but the necessary ease of dynamic contrast and sense of internal illumination - Mozart's counterpoint is one of the greatest wonders of his output - were rarely evident with sufficient consistency.
It has been the RTECO's lot in the past never to have been allowed to find its feet in the great music of the classical period. Let's hope that this concert (which was repeated in Waterford on Friday) is in that regard, at least, a harbinger of change.
