Gringolts, RTÉ NSO/Altschuler

NCH, Dublin:Can you have too much of a good thing? Even in a land of plenty? Siobhán Cleary's new Cokaygne, commissioned by RTÉ and premiered by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Altschuler, seems to suggest that plenty can easily tip into excess.

The work was inspired by a 14th-century poem,

The Land of Cokaygne

, where there are not only rivers “of oil and milk, honey and wine”, but also raunchy abbots and monks who spank white-bottomed maidens and indulge themselves with nuns.

Cleary’s evocatively veiled opening is tethered around the note D, and as the temperature and volume rise, some instruments move microtonally around it, while others lock into more conventional melodic patterns before the obsession moves upwards and finally settles on an E flat. The music is cast as a kind of dark, obsessive, scarcely relenting, almost tortured celebration.

Neither Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto of 1967 nor Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony of 1880 (the year that also produced

Romeo and Juliet

, the

1812 Overture

, the

Serenade for Strings

and

Capriccio Italien

) are at the popular end of their composers’ outputs.

The Shostakovich may linger too fully in the bitter blackness that he treated more successfully in other works. But it’s still a fine virtuoso vehicle, as was demonstrated by the commanding, throatily intense tone of soloist Ilya Gringolts, who also brought a vicious edge to the animation of the finale.

Conductor Vladimir Altschuler was a sensitive partner, and he took a full-on approach to Tchaikovsky’s folksiest symphony, with a heavily chugging energy in the opening movement and an extraordinary slow tempo in the second.

The most remarkable effects of this stridently vibrant performance were some of the offbeat downward chromatic slides in the Scherzo, which briefly gave the impression of reverse motion.