NCH, Dublin
Mendelssohn
– Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture.
Beethoven
– Piano Concerto No 3.
Larchet
– By the Waters of Moyle.
Elgar
– Enigma Variations.
Mendelssohn's Goethe-inspired Calm Seaand Prosperous Voyage Overtureis a perfect companion piece for Elgar's EnigmaVariations. Mendelssohn's programmatic overture depicts the problematically still sea and subsequent voyage of two short poems by Goethe. And Elgar's variations, which are "dedicated to my friends pictured within", includes quotations from the Mendelssohn in Variation 13 – where Elgar took the unusual step of putting actual quotation marks in the score.
Conductor Gerhard Markson took the opening of the overture to a musically listless extreme, and didn't quite catch the bubbly exuberance of the journey that followed. His account of the EnigmaVariations was straight and often exciting, with more biting rasp than warmth from the heavy brass. There's a geniality that underlies much of the music – the pictures were of friends, after all – that this performance missed.
The evening’s most rewarding performances came directly on either side of the interval. Peter Tuite’s thoughtful account of Beethoven’s heart-warming Third Piano Concerto managed to be both gentle and full-blooded. Markson’s partnership was effortlessly accommodating.
John F Larchet's By the Waters of Moyleof 1957 is a work that's nostalgic not just for the ancient Ireland of the Children of Lir, but also for a musical age that was long past at the time of its composition.
Larchet treated his Irish material with the skills of an arranger rather than a composer, and Markson, whose performance was dedicated to the memory of NSO violinist Catherine Briscoe, who died last month, made it glow with delicate fervour.
