Trpceski, RTÉ NSO/Buribayev

NCH, Dublin

Elaine Agnew – Jump Up! Rimsky-Korsakov – The Battle at Kerzhenetz. Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No 4; Symphony No 2.

THIS WAS the opening of both the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s 2010-2011 concert season and also of a new era at the podium as the young Kazakh Alan Buribayev officially began his tenure as principal conductor.

His season-opener, featuring a nearly all-Russian programme, showcased his approach to large-scale Romantic works. In the context of his two most recent predecessors, his expansiveness of gesture puts him closer to Alexander Anissimov than to Gerhard Markson. That said, he appeared to prioritise pragmatic need over physical elegance, the net result being that the line from podium to players to what we heard out in the seats was always very clear.

For Rachmaninov’s long and moody Second Symphony, this communicative, exacting kind of direction produced a performance that manifestly came from one, plainly discernible vision, the conductor’s. The playing he drew was well-balanced and focused – focused on himself. Principal clarinetist John Finucane was sweet and lyrical in the slow third movement’s long solo.

Buribayev achieved different things by the same means in The Battle of Kerzhenetz, Rimsky-Korsakov's highly programmatic entr'acte from his opera The Legend of the Invisible City and the Maiden Fevroniya. He pulled his players with him, immersing them and us whole-heartedly in Rimsky's colourful evocation of nervy anticipation and violent battle between heroic Russians and invading Tatars.

The new man also proved a sensitive yet active partner to soloist Simon Trpceski in Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto.

The Macedonian pianist, a young lion when he made his

Irish debut in the NCH six years ago, is just as breathtakingly impressive now as then but seems to have grown further, living even more unshakeably by a commitment to what the music can say than to his extraordinary ability to say it.

The concert opened with the world premiere of Elaine Agnew's Jump Up!, a surprisingly rather angry-sounding but energetic five-minute fanfare inspired by what the aborigines called the "Jump Up Land" in Australia's Blue Mountains and commissioned by the orchestra to welcome their new chief.