Review

Michael Dervan  reviews RTÉ'sNSO and Bellincampi at the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

RTÉ NSO/Bellincampi

NCH, Dublin

Michael Dervan

Beethoven - Leonore No 3 Overture. Schumann - Piano Concerto.

For his fourth appearance with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Italian conductor Giordano Bellincampi offered on Friday a mainstream programme of 19th-century German masterpieces. None of the performances showed the kind of inspiration that Bellincampi found in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique on his debut with the orchestra three years ago.

Yet the music-making was above average in interesting ways.

Bellincampi's delivery is lean and uncluttered rather than full and rich. He favours musical textures that allow for good transparency, and in all three of the evening's works he adjusted the internal balances so that the strings did not dominate the woodwind as much as they often do in the orchestra's playing.

He was careful, too, in the scaling of dynamics, finding gradations that the orchestra does not often reveal in soft playing, and always allowing for headroom at the opposite end of the scale, so that he could fire up certain climaxes with an exciting, unexpected blaze.

Anyone who likes a particularly warm romanticism may well have felt a little short-changed by the evening. Beethoven's Leonore No 3 Overture was kept cool enough until a dramatic close.

Finnish pianist Henri Sigfridsson showed well-centred musicianship and a sure command of the technical challenges of Schumann's Piano Concerto.

But not all of the moments of individuality with which he peppered his playing - an unexpected emphasis here, an expressive dislocation between the hands there - were fully convincing.

Bellincampi's accompanying was tactful, though not always tidy in ensemble.

Brahms's Second Symphony showed something of the same approach as the Beethoven, with moments of high drama injected into a generally coolish delivery.

But Bellincampi's attention to sometimes unusual detail was refreshing rather than merely idiosyncratic.

He characterised each of the four movements with strength. And his unusually brisk and bracing approach to the finale was highly effective.