Sinclair, RTÉ NSO/Lindberg

NCH, Dublin

Weber – Oberon Overture.

Jan Sandström – Echoes of Eternity. Sibelius – Symphony No 5.

Swedish trombonist/conductor/ composer Christian Lindberg is a performer who counters a lot of classical music stereotypes. He’s anything but reserved, and can be found literally bounding on and off the stage to perform. He’s a big fan of tight trousers and colourful shirts, and he comports himself with an energy to match the brightness of his appearance.

He's a musician who gives the impression of being on stage to have a good time, and to make sure that everyone around him can share in it, too. He was a busy man at the National Concert Hall on Friday, conducting the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Weber and Sibelius, appearing as soloist and conductor in Jan Sandström's Echoes of Eternity, and following up with a late-night solo trombone recital, with a programme that included music of his own.

He opened the solo stint with his Bombay Bay Barracuda, for trombone and DVD, in which the projected images of a trombone and trombonist doing unlikely things underwater were counterparted by often chirrupy, clicky synthesised sounds as well as the live trombone.

Two Gregorian Chants from Klosterneuburg sat a bit oddly on the trombone, the playing sounding both too fast and too constrained. By contrast, a very short journey through John Cage's Solo for Sliding Trombone(part of the 1957-58 Concert for Piano and Orchestra) was played as a comic turn. And both Lindberg's own Joe Jack Binglebanditand Jan Sandström's A Short Ride on a Motorbikecan have left no one in any doubt that Lindberg is still a virtuoso at the top of his game.

Not that anyone who had been at the earlier orchestral concert would have been in any doubt after Sandström's Echoes of Eternity, a concerto for two trombonists, one of whom also conducts, written for the Spanish city of Cáceres's bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2016.

The music began as a segue out of the orchestral tuning, with Lindberg first heard offstage, and then making an entry while still playing. Echoes of Eternityis an orchestrally lush, romantic, colourfully theatrical piece, which looked and sounded to be about as much fun as two trombonists might have in front of an orchestra. The non-conducting soloist, the NSO's own Jason Sinclair, took everything in his stride.

Lindberg's accounts of Weber's OberonOverture and Sibelius's Fifth Symphony were ideas-rich, eventful affairs, often refreshingly or distressingly in-your-face, depending on your point of view.