NSO/Stephen Matthews

Fidelio Overture - Beethoven

Rhapsody No 3 - Moeran

Danse macabre - Saint-Saens

Petite suite (exc) - Debussy

Intermezzo (Adriana Lecouvreur, Act II) - Cilea

Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin Wagner

At the lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall, the National Symphony Orchestra was conducted by New Zealand-born Stephen Matthews. It was not a notably fruitful partnership, for Matthews's conducting tended to produce rhythmic emphasis and little momentum.

This was most noticeable when the music was loud and fast. The hard-pressed tempos in Beethoven's Fidelio Overture and in the "Ballet" from Debussy's Petite Suite (played in Busser's well-known orchestration), allied to Matthews's tendency to over-direct detail, produced playing which was too frantic to be naturally energetic. SaintSaens's Danse macabre, which needs drive and ample shaping, had neither, despite the NSO's best efforts.

"En bateau" from the Petite Suite showed just how self-defeating this emphatic direction of detail was. The opening melody rocked along nicely, until broken by the overpointed answering motifs. The concluding item, the Prelude to Act III of Wagner's Lohen- grin, fared better; but even the self-sustaining drive of this piece was whipped along rather than being allowed to shape itself.

Better features emerged in Moeran's Rhapsody No. 3. The music's episodic aspects were emphasised by the tendency of the conductor and the pianist, Una Hunt, to linger over the many seams and dreamy moments. Nevertheless, the almost under-stated piano playing was in many ways well-suited to a piece which sounds bloated if it strives, and the orchestral contribution was often vividly coloured.