Reviewed: Mulvey, RTÉ CO/Grant
Mulvey, RTÉ CO/Grant
NCH, Dublin
Precious few of them know it, but there are countless radio listeners whose catechism of top composers ought to begin with Bach, Beethoven and Binge.
Why? Because Ronald Binge (1910-79), a one-time cinema organist and orchestrator to the great Mantovani, is the seldom credited composer of that perennial favourite of the airwaves, Sailing By.
Written in 1963, it has long served as the prelude to BBC Radio 4's nightly shipping forecast, and was the obvious theme-tune choice for RTÉ's weekly Seascapes programme - albeit in a dubious arrangement for piano and orchestra recorded by Ronnie Aldrich in 1984.
The official BBC version, played by the Perry/Gardner Orchestra, is sacrosanct. When it was pulled from the schedule in 1993, an enraged public successfully petitioned for its return two years later.
A live performance is a rare treat. This week's, by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, transferred the familiar um-cha-cha guitar part to harp, and relegated the close-miked woodwind arabesques to a discreet middleground.
Yet conductor Gearóid Grant took the soothing bed-time melody at a lilting pace that would have satisfied the pickiest of Radio 4 mavens.
Sailing By was followed by another of Binge's winning miniatures, The Watermill (1959), where the mellifluous solo playing of oboist Peter Healy made for a decisive moment of charm.
These were the shortest items in a shrewd programme of water- related pieces, of which the rest were - by lunch-time standards - amply scaled.
The amplest, four of Elgar's Sea Pictures, were painted with careful brush-strokes by mezzo-soprano Áine Mulvey, who is a member of the National Chamber Choir.
Elgar composed these settings in 1899 for the fog-horn voice and Britannia-like delivery of contralto Clara Butt - a luxury reflected in the often heavily scored accompaniment.
Thus, despite Grant's careful balancing of the modestly sized RTÉ CO, and Mulvey's astute espousal of a stylistically authentic portamento, her lower notes in particular tended to lie below the level of the orchestra.
While Elgar's finer textures called for more instrumental delicacy, Grant secured in the tuttis the kind of tonal richness that goes with a more populous string section.
This was beneficial too in The Sea and Sinbad's Ship from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, whose wistful violin solos were incisively contributed by the RTÉ CO's leader Mia Cooper.
Two overtures - that for Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, and Mendelssohn's Hebrides - began and ended the lunch-time voyage, the latter impacting less through dutiful precision than by Grant's adroit management of the adrenaline.
