By EVAN GILLESPIE, South Bend Tribune March 12, 2008

SOUTH BEND — Wednesday night’s performance by Camerata Ireland at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center was brimming with contrasts—between nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, between somber and lively moods, between familiar pieces and not-so-familiar pieces, between a small orchestra and the big sound it made. 

Conductor and pianist Barry Douglas led his band of Irish musicians through a program that was pleasingly varied and extremely well presented.

(see the original review at South Bend Tribune ). 

The program that Douglas put together ranged from the unadorned elegance of Gorecki’s “Three pieces in Olden Style for strings” to the broad complexity of Schubert’s Symphony no. 5 in B-flat, with a Stravinsky concerto for strings and a Beethoven piano concerto in between. The 25-piece chamber orchestra handled each piece with precision and remarkable musicianship, the color of their sound transforming easily to fit the character of each work.

Gorecki kicked off the concert, the nearly subliminal introduction of the first piece building gradually through the simply structured pieces, from the urgency of the second to the dark undercurrent of the third. The orchestra’s strings showed mastery of a breathtaking dynamic range, as the pieces’ pulsing themes rose and fell.

After a slight miscue in which the orchestra nearly failed to bring its winds onstage (“We’ve forgotten a few people,” Douglas explained sheepishly), the concert’s centerpiece, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in B-flat major, was flawless. Charged with conducting the orchestra as he played, Douglas managed to squeeze all of the concerto’s very many notes into the spaces between his intervals of leading the other musicians.

Or perhaps it was the other way around, with the conducting fitting between the bouts of virtuosic playing. Regardless, Douglas’ connection with the orchestra fit well with the piece, in which the sometimes hyperactive piano trades themes with the orchestra, sometimes taking the lead, sometimes echoing.

The pieces of the second half were especially well suited to the strengths of a chamber orchestra. Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for strings, almost entirely frenetic agitation from beginning to end, allowed the small orchestra’s individual musicians to shine, particularly in the final movement, when the violins and violas take up an energetic joust.

The Schubert, on the other hand, demonstrated just how large a small orchestra can sound when it’s a chamber orchestra of this caliber; with a clean mesh of instruments that isdifficult for a full orchestra to achieve, the group was able to make the expansive symphony roar, while still allowing the gentle melodic lines to be carried easily by a single flute.

Camerata Ireland boasts that its musicians are the best Ireland has to offer, but if Wednesday’s performance is any indication, that small country is more than ready to take on the world.