NCH, Dublin
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's Culture Nightoffering was special, not least because it confirmed that the contemporary item on a programme can be the life and soul of the party.
That's not to say that Anders Hillborg's clarinet concerto Peacock Tales(1998, rev. 2001) lets the listener off lightly. Though the music borders on the comfort-zone of minimalism, its veins flow with the true blood of the avant garde.
While a satisfying work in itself, the concerto gains an extra dimension from the remarkable talents of the performer for whom it was written, the composer’s fellow Swede Martin Fröst.
Spotlit before an orchestra bathed in red or blue, and for the most part anonymised by a deathly pallid, three- horned mask, Fröst strutted the stage in a categorical fusion of mime-dance and cutting-edge instrumental technique.
An encore – two helter-skelter Klezmer dances deftly arranged for clarinet and strings by Fröst’s brother Göran – was even more rapturously approved.
By way of warming up, Fröst had been soloist also in the attractive two-movement concerto by Aaron Copland, where the translucent playing of the NSO strings and exquisitely persuasive tempos of principal guest conductor Hannu Lintu were in marked contrast to the stiff reading of Stravinsky's Symphony in Cwith which the concert had opened.
If amends were needed, they were amply returned in Beethoven's Symphony No 5, which, at the end of such a refreshingly adventurous concert, seemed more than ever the epitome of the classical orchestral canon.
With a keen ear for texture, a ruthless eye on the formal agenda, and a sense of humour that almost, but not quite, crossed the line into comedy, Lintu sapped from the well-worn pages a statement of brightly coloured, infectious affirmation.
