Overture to a Kitchen Comedy - A.J. Potter
Violin Concerto - Beethoven
Rite of Spring - Stravinsky
Good orchestration, said Stravinsky, is when you don't notice it. It's a fair point. And you could suggest, by analogy, that good music-making, too, is when you don't notice it. By which I mean that a performance which leaves you thinking about the particularities of the performer is an altogether lesser affair than one which leaves you thinking about the music itself.
Friday's NSO subscription concert under Robert Houlihan was firmly of the latter category. Over the years, Dubliners have been offered Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in approaches ranging from orgiastic looseness to reined-in discipline. Houlihan, closer to the latter than the former, stood apart from the rest for a myriad of fresh perspectives, as if, in preparing the performance, he took nothing for granted. And what he was then able to offer the listener was the thrill of hearing this seminal work as if new: shocking, exciting, exhilarating.
Dubliner Maighread McCrann, currently leader of the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, achieved much the same effect in the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Her approach was careful and considered, trusting of the skeletal solo writing rather than intimidated by it. This is truly a work which makes the most out of the least, and, although the performance was not without its flaws (some prominent lapses of intonation from the soloist, and a clear divergence of view on the basic tempo of the first movement between soloist and conductor), the rewards were abundant and abiding.
A.J. Potter's Overture to a Kitchen Comedy was a light foil, not entirely appropriate to the rest of the programme, but done with a straightness which made it sound at its best. This concert reinforced my impression that Robert Houlihan is the most consistently interesting conductor who works with the NSO.
