NSO/Kasper de Roo

{TABLE} Hebrides Overture ............. Mendelssohn Piano concerto No 3 ........... Beethoven Symphony No 41 (Jupiter) ...... Mozart {/TABLE} IT'S a curious arrangement Whereby the winner of the Dublin Piano Competition waits a full cycle before returning to play a concerto in the subscription series of the National Symphony Orchestra.

In the three years since he won the competition at the age of 17, Davide Franceschetti has not featured as often in Ireland's concert life as did either of the previous winners (Philippe Cassard and Pavel Nersessjan) in the period following their success. He's still, then, something of an unknown quantity, a player of precociously easy virtuosity and, as the competition showed, has the inclination to use it to the full.

Last year, a carefully shaded performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto with the Irish Chamber Orchestra showed him capable of working in a mode of classical restraint. But neither restraint nor ebullience was evidenced in his performance of Beethoven's Third with the NSO under Kasper de Roo on Friday night. Here he was frankly dull and dutiful, except for a few moments in the first movement when he pressed ahead, the none too well aligned conducting of de Roo did little to help.

The concert as a whole was a dispiriting occasion and de Roo failed to animate either that most bracing of overtures, Mendelssohn's Hebrides or Mozart's great Jupiter Symphony.