RTÉ NSO/Douglas

Brahms– Piano Concerto No 1. Mussorgsky/Ravel– Pictures at an Exhibition at theNCH, Dublin

INNOVATION IS the watchword for the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and Culture Night prompted three of the current season’s novelties: a pre-concert recital (the first of two), a main concert with direction of the orchestra entrusted to a solo instrumentalist (the first of seven) and a post-concert conductor interview (the first ever for the NSO).

Pianist Barry Douglas – who directs his own orchestra Camerata Ireland and is an established guest conductor with the NSO – was in charge of the orchestral programme.

The seemingly unprecedented idea of solo-directing Brahms’s two piano concertos (he returns for the second concerto in April) was Douglas’s own.

“Straightforward” was his own surprising word for the remarkable exercise of bringing off the mighty first concerto without the aid of a conductor.

Brahms’s underlying classicism, Douglas explained, made the feat possible.

The energy and persuasiveness of his solo playing were unflinching, though not without certain concessions to accuracy, nor was there much respite from the opaqueness that has earned Brahms an unjustly poor reputation as an orchestrator.

Yet the extraordinary circumstances proved less problematical as regards ensemble than might have been expected. Cogent motivation gave the concerto as a whole an unusually streamlined feel.

The rest of the evening was given over to two versions of the work that propelled Douglas into the final round (and thence to victory) in the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

The original solo version occupied the pre-concert recital by young Irish pianist Sophie Cashell, whose likeable but at times cautious performance suggested she will have more to say with this music in the future.

Ravel’s definitive orchestration followed the concerto. Douglas realised it with such clarity and panache that it was hard to believe his subsequent confession that he would have orchestrated it differently himself.