Trois chansons - Ravel
Pavane pour une infante defunte - Ravel
Cinque melodies populaires greques - Ravel
L'enfant et les sortileges - Ravel
As a showcase for the musical achievements of young people, Wednesday night's all-Ravel concert at the NCH was rewarding yet slightly disconcerting. The programme and the concert performance of the opera L'enfant et les sortileges were devised by the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama's artist-in-residence, Bernadette Greevy, who gave a reliable performance of the Cinque melodies populaires greques with Deborah Kelleher (piano).
The Trois chansons can tax professional choirs, let alone a student choir. The DIT Chamber Choir coped with many of the music's tricky aspects and conductor Bernie Sherlock timed each song to a tee. Yet it was significant that the weakest moments occurred not in the zesty first and third songs, but in the quiet, sustained tone needed for the second, and that the choir's most consistent singing came in the forward presentation required by the opera.
In Pavane pour une infante defunte the guest conductor, Franz-Paul Decker, directed the DIT Orchestra in a performance which was too careful to convince, despite some good solo playing, especially from the first horn. This piece fitted the programme's concept; but it hardly encourages a youth orchestra to put its best foot forward.
L'enfant et les sortileges was the evening's main reward in that it saw some good playing and singing, while the staging, in which the soloists held masks to represent their multiple characters, was an efficient adaptation to concert conditions. Yet with several of the eight soloists, the conductor and the leaders of the violins and cello coming from outside the ranks of the DIT - some of them from outside Ireland - this was an uneasy compromise between student and professional presentation.