Recent arts events reviewed by Irish Timeswriters

Chang/ RTÉ NSO/Bellincampi

NCH, Dublin

Nørgard - Pastorale. Brahms - Violin Concerto. Mendelssohn - Symphony No 3 Scottish

Sarah Chang, one of several top-profile classical stars appearing as soloists with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra this season, came ready to meet the heightened expectations for a work so familiar and so beloved as the Violin Concertoby Brahms. Now in her 20s, she was a child prodigy whom the late Yehudi Menuhin declared the most wonderful violinist he had ever heard.

And it was Menuhin who elsewhere described the Brahms piece as “soft clay to be moulded in performance”.

The moulding that Chang worked resulted in a seamless fusing together of Brahms’s conflicting tensions between instrumental virtuosity and symphonic structure and language. She brought this about by a flawless delivery, deep musical intelligence and barely contained expressive exuberance.

Partnering Chang was conductor Giordano Bellincampi. He created space for her while also drawing from his players a faithful rendition of the peculiarly classical-romantic orchestral concerns that Brahms sustains in parallel to the role of the soloist.

Bellincampi also made the most of Mendelssohn's strong pictorial writing in his Symphony No 3, inspired – just as his better-known Hebrides Overture– by a tour of Scotland in 1829. The Danish-Italian conductor created a dark sense of history in the opening evocation of Holyrood Castle in Edinburgh, and a feeling of the remoteness and majesty of the Scottish landscape in the finale. As contrast, there was something of Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dreamin the lively scherzo.

The concert opened with Pastorale, a short piece extracted by Per Nørgard from his film score for Babette's Feastin 1987.

For strings only, fragile and serene, it recalls the story's curious warmth when a lottery-winning housekeeper holds a banquet for the members of a Puritan faith community. - MICHAEL DUNGAN

New Year Opera Gala,

NCH, Dublin

Three popular Leeside sopranos came together to celebrate 25 years of activity by the Cork-based Barra Ó Tuama Promotions in this delightful concert at the NCH. As the vocal and artistic credentials of Majella Cullagh, Mary Hegarty and Cara O'Sullivan are well established by now, suffice to say they were all in sterling form. The programme was neatly divided into four segments. First up was a set of mostly frisky French arias and songs by Gounod, Thomas and Delibes that included Hegarty's sparkling account of Philine's Je suis Tianiafrom Mignonand a finely blended Lakméflower duet from Cullagh and O'Sullivan, with the latter taking the lower line.

The short Italian selection focused on more sober emotions that allowed the three to flaunt their command of legato. Hegarty soared winningly as Puccini's Magda, Cullagh was a resolute Wally in Catalani's opera and, as Bellini's Norma, O'Sullivan offered her familiar long-lined "Casta diva". The section closed with the first of the evening's party pieces: Verdi's Sempre Liberaparcelled out between the three voices.

The letting-down of hair continued thereafter with showpiece arias from Die Fledermausand a string of the kind of Neapolitan songs that usually come with the tag "tenors only", but rarely get anything like the musical respect they were afforded here. In fact, amidst all the high spirits and partying, there was never any lessening of musical integrity at any point.

Colette Davis's Voices of Limerickoffered good balance and intonation, as well as exemplary diction, in four choral offerings and Philip Thomas was the amiable and able piano accompanist. As a tribute to Barra Ó Tuama, he contributed a transcription of Wallace's In Happy Momentsthat cleverly juxtaposed the familiar air with snippets from Balfe's Marble Hallsas well as five Verdi operas. - JOHN ALLEN