Rosamunde Overture D644 - Schubert
Marimba Concerto - Ney Rosauro
Also sprach Zarathustra - Strauss
The original centrepiece of last Friday's concert by the National Symphony Orchestra was to have been a specially-commissioned percussion concerto by Benjamin Dwyer. In its absence, what was offered was a poor substitute - a Marimba Concerto from Brazil by Ney Rosauro, a piece that has been taken up by Evelyn Glennie, for whom it serves as an easy-on-the-ear kind of ethnic fodder.
In lesser hands, it sounded weak indeed. Richard O'Donnell's dutiful playing was short on the sort of strongly-projected sassiness this sort of piece needs. Stylistically, it falls somewhere between minimalism and light music, and in the context of a symphony concert it needs all the help it can get. And there wasn't anything more than routine in the playing of the NSO under Gerhard Markson to make the task of the soloist any easier.
The problems in this concert began with the opening item. Markson chose to take the introduction to Schubert's Rosamunde Overture so slowly that ensemble, intonation and momentum suffered, and even in the main section the spring of the dance was cramped in the pursuit of a songfulness that was never quite achieved.
Markson's penchant for lingering in the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss was demonstrated in his 1998 performance of Ein Heldenleben. Also sprach Zarathustra is not quite as resilient a piece as the composer's earlier heroic self-portrait. Friday's performance made it perfectly clear where Markson wanted to take the music, but, in spite of some glorious moments neither the intricacy of Strauss's voluble counterpoint nor the detail of the NSO's playing quite sustained the vision on this occasion.
