{TABLE} Spring Nocturne - Sunlight and Shadow................... May Violin Concerto......................................... Beethoven Symphony No 7........................................... Beethoven {/TABLE} LAST NIGHT, at the National Concert Hall, the National Symphony Orchestra produced some of the most invigorating playing of Beethoeven's orchestral music I have heard in a long time. The concert was conducted by the NSO's principal conductor, Kasper de Roo. In addition to the Violin Concerto and the Symphony No. 7, the programme included Frederick May's Spring Nocturne - "Sunlight and Shadow", written in 1955 and one of the last works in May's small output. Its style invites comparison with English pastoral composers, especially Delius and Vaughan Williams. Yet this persuasive performance showed that May had strengths of his own and supported the common opinion that his premature retirement from composition, due to illness, was a serious loss to Irish music.
Hagai Shaham, the Israeli violinist, was the soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. His superb musicianship and impeccable sound were a treat. It can be difficult to strike the right expressive tone for the first movement of the concerto, and this performance did take a while to find its identity. However, in the slow movement the rapport between soloist and orchestra had a chamber-music type of responsiveness, while the finale had an irrepressible, springing energy.
What energy the seventh symphony had! This music's elemental force can easily lapse into bombast. But not on this occasion, for Kasper de Roo and the NSO were very good at combining immediate vigour with long-range drive and shaping. Good orchestral balance has always been one of de Roo's strengths, but I have never heard him direct a performance which was also so muscular and spontaneous. The odd rough edge did not matter, for this was an uplifting concert.