Kikimora - Liadov

Le festin de l'araignee - Roussel

Symphony No 8 (Unfinished) - chubert

The first minute of Friday's lunchtime orchestral concert at the National Concert Hall made one sit up and take notice. And that was in music which opens quietly and undemonstratively.

Liadov's exquisitely crafted character-piece, Kikimora, requires full control of the basics of orchestral technique if it is to work at all. The subtlety of dynamics, balance, colour and speed which the National Symphony Orchestra achieved in Friday's lunchtime orchestra concert under the baton of Mihkel Kutson, from Estonia, was consistently impressive, and nigh-on ideal for music of this kind.

Kutson is young, yet has a security of technique which many far-more-experienced conductors would envy. He knows how to use it too, and is a natural musician who can encourage the best from an orchestra and communicate exactly what he wants.

Under these conditions, Roussel's Le festin de l'araignee, a ballet piece written for the Ballet Russes in 1913 (the same year as their infamous premiere of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps), fared well. Like the Liadov, it is insubstantial music which revels in orchestral possibilities.

In Schubert's Symphony No 8 ("Unfinished") the playing had all the technical strengths delivered in the other pieces. Here, in the most telling work on the programme, Kutson stood on the threshold of insight without entering in. Nevertheless this concert, from an orchestra which can be extremely variable under different conductors, suggested that a repeat visit by Kutson might be well worthwhile.