Tragic Overture - Brahms
Violin Concerto - Beethoven
Kristal - Ron Ford
Symphony No 9 - Shostakovich
Onstage foot-stomping was the order of the day on Tuesday, when the Netherlands Youth Orchestra ended its first Irish tour.
Jurjen Hempel, its conductor since last autumn, seems to have established a good rapport with his charges. His approach is fresh and distinctive, and the playing carries the charge that goes with conveying the impression that every note matters.
Brahms's Tragic Overture was an absorbing introduction to the orchestra's sharp-edged and somewhat astringent tone, which brought to mind the colours of period-instrument bands in this repertoire.
The string section rather overpowered the woodwind in the overture, a feature remedied by some swapping of personnel for the Beethoven, where, with frequent on-the-beat hesitations in running passage work, the flexibly sweet-toned Sonja van Beek took a much more conventional approach than the orchestra.
The specially commissioned Kristal by the Kansas composer Ron Ford presented hazy, floating streels around a firmer woodwind core, sounding like a moody set-up for an event that never comes.
Shostakovich's Ninth, his first symphony after the end of the second World War, was expected to be something on the lines of a large-scale hymn of victory. The piece he produced caused him trouble for being too lightweight, and its simple surfaces have not earned it the popularity of his more probing works. Hempel and his players performed it with a sense of heightened expression, bringing out an often grotesque sense of parody that would surely have infuriated the Soviet authorities of the 1940s even more than a plainly jolly reading.
The single encore was Percy Grainger's Irish Tune From County Derry, tarted up by Hempel in ways I suspect the composer would have welcomed. It provided an unexpected twist to a stimulating concert.
