NSO /Martin Handley

{TABLE} Le Corsair Overture ................... Berlioz Songs of the Auvergne (exc) ........... Canteloube The Water Sprite ...................... Dvorak {/TABLE} BRITISH conductor Martin Handley was in charge of the National Symphony Orchestra's lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday. This was the first time he had conducted the NSO and it proved a partnership in which weaknesses and strengths were distinctive.

On the credit side, rhythmic buoyancy was nicely sustained throughout slow, as well as fast tempi. This was especially welcome in Berlioz's Le Corsair overture: the swashbuckling energy of the last few minutes was thrilling. Other strengths were snappy ensemble and defined phrasing.

The latter was one of the strongest features in Dvorak's long symphonic poem The Water Sprite, and it was needed to sustain interest across this music's straight forward repetitions and variations of themes.

On the debit side, there was an intermittent weakness in focusing elaborate textures and it seemed odd that this was most pronounced in slow music.

While some of the faster stretches of Le Corsair, for example, were too hard driven, their sheer energy had compelling force, but some of the slow sections seemed shapeless, rhythmic buoyancy notwithstanding. This tendency reached its low point in the three slow songs extracted from Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne.

For all the nice pacing, the orchestral sound did not have that delicately sumptuous quality which is one of the music's real strengths. It was significant that the three faster songs, such as the Mahler-esque L'aio de rosto, were much better.

Virginia Kerr was the soprano soloist in the Canteloube. She did not achieve that seemingly artless quality which makes these artified folk songs sound at their best, but her singing of the three fast settings had real character and an engaging energy.