Pip Clarke (violin), Canzona, NSO/Colman Pearce

Passacaglia - Webern

Folk Dreams - Leonardo Balada

Violin Concerto No 2 - Prokofiev

The Planets - Holst

Of all the great and influential composers of the 20th century, Webern is the one least frequently heard in orchestral concerts in Ireland. Which makes the inclusion of the Passacaglia, Op. 1, in last Friday's concert by the NSO a matter for rejoicing.

The work, among the last Webern wrote under the tutelage of Schoenberg, is both atypical and full of fore shadowings. The emotional world, sometimes severe, sometimes incandescent, is more open than in the later, 12-tone works.

The construction is less compressed (though it is absurd of the NSO's programme note to suggest that no other published movement by Webern even exceeds three minutes). And the thumbprint motivic handling and contrapuntal proclivity are already well in evidence. Colman Pearce directed a performance more notable for its ardour and urgency than for balance or clarity.

Spanish composer Leonardo Balada's Folk Dreams, calling on traditional material from Latvia, Catalonia and Ireland, conjures up drifting clouds of intertwined lines, as if recollecting from hazy memory shapes that never quite resolve themselves in recall. It brought to mind the music used to reinforce scenes of emotion, memory, or drug-induced disorientation in many a movie. In this, the piece's first complete performance under the dedicatee of the Irish movement, the technique proved as effective as ever.

Sadly, the musical rewards of this concert diminished rapidly thereafter. Pip Clarke tried to milk too much romanticism out of Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, playing within a dynamic range best described as loudish, and rarely seeing eye-to-eye with the conductor about tempos - pressing ahead when the music was fast, lagging behind when it was slow.

In Holst's Planets suite, Pearce, who seemed set an a course of excitement through volume, allowed the instrumental choirs to balance by natural weight, string lines tended to get lost under the brass, and both were open to obliteration in percussive climaxes. In the slower movements, the restraint of Uranus, the Magician, with its evocation of Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice, was an island of relief in an otherwise over-bearing performance.