Coriolan Overture - Beethoven
Piano Concerto - Schumann
Fantasy on a Theme of Franz Schubert - Reinhard Febel
Symphony No 8, ("Unfinished")- Schubert
Friday night's concert at the National Concert Hall epitomised the virtues of Gerhard Markson's independent and defined approach to mainstream repertoire. He seems aware of traditions, but each piece is thought out afresh.
Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony had the usual lyricism plus a less traditional ebb and flow of drama. Rhythmic tension accumulated as melody fragmented - in the first movement's development section, for example - and the return of long-phrased lyricism was its resolution.
The National Symphony Orchestra was in responsive form. Their precise attack - another Markson characteristic - was welcome, even when it highlighted the occasional lapse in ensemble, as it did in an otherwise strong performance of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture.
After the interval Markson conducted Fantasia on a Theme of Franz Schubert by 46-year-old Reinhard Febel. After a few bars of mysteriously dense sounds from, it turned out, the middle of the piece, he stopped and spoke of how Febel developed his 15-minute work from a Schubert Landler. It was an excellent talk - informal, enthusiastic, and communicative in explaining the relationships between two very different worlds of sound. The concert's highlight, for me at any rate, was a vivid performance of Schumann's Piano Concerto, with Homero Francesch as a technically and musically impressive soloist. Francesch's Gouldlike clarity, the spontaneous given-and-take between orchestra and soloist, and the mix of heroic statement and intimacy - all these felt right for this most subtle of Romantic piano concertos.