National Concert Hall
La valse - Ravel
Piano Concerto No 3 - Rachmaninov
Symphony No 2 - Schumann
Gerhard Markson has a galvanising effect on the players of the National Symphony Orchestra, whose principal conductor he becomes for three years starting next September. His mere presence on the podium seems enough to produce playing that sounds both better drilled and more unanimous of purpose than has long been this orchestra's norm. And, as the onstage end-of-concert responses demonstrated on Sunday, the players clearly enjoy the extra discipline.
There's a lot for the audiences to enjoy, too. To put it at its simplest, Markson makes the NSO sound more of an orchestra and less the disparate group of musicians it so often presents itself as. It's a pleasure to hear the orchestra on good form, although, as things tighten up, the looser or more flawed strands that remain inevitably show up all the more clearly.
These are not just a matter of technical polish. On Sunday, there was, for instance, a sensuality of gesture missing from Ravel's La valse. The gorgeousness of instrumental colour was there in abundance, but there were moments when the music was driven with a fierceness that edged into rigidity.
Suggestiveness is an essential ambience for La valse, and for Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto, too, though you would never have guessed this from Bernd Glemser's handling of it on Sunday. Glemser's note-mastery of the music - he played the bigger of the two cadenzas - was not in doubt. Nor was the readiness of the audience to respond to the virtuosic demonstrativeness of his approach. But there's more at the heart of this music than Glemser's consistently dazzling playing managed to reveal on this occasion.
Markson's assertiveness was shown to best advantage in a vigorous, thrusting account of Schumann's Second Symphony, a work returning to the orchestra's repertoire after an absence of more than a decade. Markson's is a very clearly defined view, with lots of thumbprints of personal rubato. But the viewpoint was presented with persuasive commitment and drive.
