Mahagonny Suite - Weill/Br uckner-Ruggeberg

Violin Concerto - Weill

Little Threepenny Music (exc) - Weill

Symphony No 2 - Weill

Kurt Weill (1900-1950) is best remembered for his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, particularly the Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three- penny Opera), premiered in 1928. The success of this work, its jazzy musical idiom laced with acid, eclipsed everything else in the composer's output.

When the rise of the Nazis forced Weill's emigration, he eventually ended up in the US, where, his association with Brecht notwithstanding, he turned to writing musicals. And during his European years, Weill also wrote concert music in which his pedigree as a pupil of Busoni is apparent.

Incredibly, last Friday's centenary tribute by the RTE Concert Orchestra opted to bypass the most significant areas of Weill's output, which all involved the voice. Orchestral suites are no more viable a representation of Weill than they would be of Verdi or Wagner.

Beyond that, the value of the celebration was compromised by conductor David Heusel, who failed to show any mastery of the complex issues of style which Weill's music so frequently raises.

Heusel conducted everything on the programme with a flat rhythmic tread and displayed little sensitivity to issues of instrumental balance. It wasn't just that the vocal origins of the Mahagonny Suite as arranged by Wilhelm Bruckner-Ruggeberg were thoroughly masked, but the jazzy flavour of the scoring was also poorly captured.

Michael d'Arcy seemed a sterling soloist in the Concerto for Violin and Wind, but this was a matter that frequently had to be taken on faith, as the loudness of the orchestra often reduced the audience's experience of the soloist to one more visual than aural. The excerpts from the Little Threepenny Music (the Tango- Ballade not listed in the programme, thrown in for good measure) came closest to finding their true mark.