Melody Mix was the title given to the RTE Concert Orchestra's tea-time programme under Stephen Barlow at the NCH on Friday. It was, as the description suggests, an evening of tuneful snippets, mostly by well-known composers from the 19th century, with just the slow movement from Haydn's Symphony No. 44 recalling an earlier age, and Rachmaninov's Vocalise representing the 20th century, in date if not in spirit.
Barlow's approach might best be described as no-nonsense, business-like. At the very start, in Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor Overture, there was a suggestion in the atmospheric restraint of the music-making that the generalised efficiency which the RTECO tends to trot out in this sort of repertoire, might on this occasion be transcended.
But, no, this did not turn out to be an evening of fresh insights into such familiar favourites as Offenbach's Barcarolle, Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, or the first suite from Bizet's Carmen.
It was, rather, an evening of generally solid, though not always tightly-disciplined, traversal through much-travelled terrain. Not everything gelled ideally. Some of the rubato in the dances from Smetana's Bartered Bride seemed rather extreme, and the Haydn did sound rather out of place. And, while there was nothing you could describe as exceptional nor was there anything that veered acutely enough off the middle way to sound really exceptionable. The presence of a soloist would surely have helped to lift the tenor of the evening as would a more imaginative approach to the overall shape of the programming.
