Reviews

Irish Timesreviewers take a look at recent performances by the  RTÉ National Symphony Orchestraconducted by Gavin Maloneyand The National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Irelandconducted by Matthias Bamert

RTÉ NSO/Maloney NCH, Dublin

Schubert - Rosamunde Overture. J. Strauss II - Wine, Women and Song. Tritsch-Tratsch Polka. Voices of Spring. Beethoven - Symphony No 1.

This programme in the RTÉ New Year's Lunchtime Choice concert series was devoted to music from 19th-century Vienna. Under the baton of its assistant conductor, Gavin Maloney, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra played securely and with conviction.

It is comparatively easy to get the music of Johann Strauss II moving along with a swing, and rather harder to combine that swing with a long-line phrasing that leads through the subtle shifts of tempo between sections.

In pieces as contrasted as the Tritsch- Tratsch Polka and the waltz Voices of Spring, Maloney and the RTÉ NSO managed to do just that, with striking flexibility and definition.

The concert pieces from earlier in the century, Schubert's Rosamunde Overture and Beethoven's Symphony No 1, also had strong drive and direction.

In tuttis, orchestral balance was not always as clear as it could have been; but the main characteristic, for good or ill, was a strict rhythmic style that eschewed even a slight slackening of tempo at structural turning points or endings, and that emphasised accent over phrasing.

Probably the most famous, or infamous, proponent of this approach is Roger Norrington, whose recordings of Beethoven symphonies have roused praise and ire for a view of Beethoven's musical drama that favours forceful directness over finesse.

In this concert, that straightforward approach proved somewhat limiting.

The neatness of the playing in the symphony seemed to emphasise Beethoven's relationship to Haydn more than his role as the proto-romantic symphonist.

However, the performance was also frustrating in being too clean and formal.

It did not have enough force to capture the music's dramatic power, which was precisely what attracted the attention of the Viennese public after its premiere in 1800. Martin Adams

Benedetti, National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/Bamert

NCH, Dublin

Rossini - Thieving Magpie Overture. Sibelius - Violin Concerto.

Strauss - Alpine Symphony.

The National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ireland was back in action at the weekend, giving concerts under Matthias Bamert in Limerick and Dublin.

The programme was an ambitious one, including the last and most extravagant of Richard Strauss's tone poems, the Alpine Symphony, which was completed and premiered in 1915.

The composer himself, already a master orchestrator, is reputed to have said of his experience, "Now, at last, I've learnt instrumentation!" and also that "Just once I wanted to compose in the same way a cow yields milk".

The sheer size of the orchestra he asked for, and the extent to which the orchestration itself is actually the centre of attraction, are distinctive features that have worked both for and against the work in the concert hall.

The detailed pictorialism of the music is indeed a thing of wonder, but many of the effects can seem frothy rather than substantial.

As with Rossini's Thieving Magpie Overture, which opened the programme, Matthias Bamert's handling of the piece was sober and balanced.

It was as if he chose to turn away from the risks of giving the young players their head, and opted instead for a course of containment, where no one was likely to wander off the path during the mountain trekking or get sidetracked by the spectacular sights.

Although some moments of excitement would be sacrificed, everyone was sure to arrive back at the end, safe and sound.

Nicola Benedetti, winner of the BBC's Musician of the Year competition in 2004, was the soloist in Sibelius's Violin Concerto, a work that suited her approach altogether better than the Mendelssohn concerto that she played with the RTÉ NSO last March.

Benedetti gives the impression of being a player who likes to live in the moment, and although there was something missing from the bigger picture in her handling of the Sibelius, the sense of engagement was still high.  Michael Dervan