{TABLE} Symphonic variations .............. Dvorak Daphnis and Chloe Suite No 2 ...... Ravel Alpine Symphony ................... Strauss {/TABLE} RICHARD Strauss had most of his best work behind him when he completed his Alpine Symphony in 1915. This picture, in music of a day in the life of a mountain was a mammoth undertaking, one which the laconic composer claimed amused him even less than chasing cockroaches. Yet when he heard it in rehearsal if provoked him to remark, "at last I have learnt to orchestrate".
The orchestration alone (the piece calls for 20 horns, 12 of them part of an offstage ensemble, and the specified number of strings is 64) is demanding enough to militate against performances - it was the sheer size of the piece which stood in the way of its being heard in London in a major Strauss festival in 1947.
Size might well have been expected to rule the work out of court for the National Youth Orchestra. But the orchestra's management and the conductor Albert Rosen decided to programme it on their recent tour in spite of the imbalance in available strings (too few violins and double basses, too many violas and cellos) and the occasional gaps that might be left elsewhere.
Albert Rosen memorably exhibited his credentials as a musical mountaineer with the RTESO in 1989, and Saturday's performance with the NYO at the NCH also managed to capture much of the music's orchestrally splendid, monumental elaborateness.
The orchestra was on fine form, too, in the suite from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe (where the flute playing was especially winning); by comparison, however, the musical characterisation of the opening work, Dvorak's Symphonic Variations, was altogether more limited.
