RDS, Dublin
Mendelssohn– String Symphony No 13. Gould – Stringmusic. Mozart– Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364.
Anthony Marwood’s farewell concert as artistic director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra at the RDS on Saturday was not the concert it might have been.
In the simplest sense that was because the outer works of the programme that was originally announced – Janacek’s wind sextet Mládi and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto – were replaced by one of Mendelssohn’s teenage string symphonies and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola.
The substitutions gave all the appearance of a cost-saving measure in straitened times. But programming difficulties have been at the heart of Marwood’s time with the ICO. Simply put, he has often chosen to present programmes – by himself as well as by guest directors or conductors – that have not made a great deal of musical sense, and, if Dublin attendances are anything to go by, have not proved interesting to large numbers of concert goers.
Yet, although his five years with the orchestra have been a time of extremely mixed blessings, his great strength has been in the high technical standards he has secured in performance, and the persuasive- ness with which he has actually managed to deliver his sometimes strange repertoire choices.
The studious teenage Mendelssohn’s practice symphonies for strings have become home territory for the ICO, and it’s hard to imagine the single movement that constitutes the 13th in the series being delivered with greater fire or conviction than Marwood and his players brought to it on Saturday.
Morton Gould's Pulitzer Prize-winning Stringmusic, written for Mstislav Rostropovich's final season as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, has all the professionalism and profundity of a Hollywood trailer. From its major ploys to its tiniest gestures, it's always anxious for you to know how much what it's saying actually matters. And yet it doesn't. It's all surface, beautifully engineered and polished, but lacking in substance. As a showpiece, Marwood and the ICO made it bask in self-reflective glory.
Marwood himself is, of course, a violinist of note. He threaded his way through the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with exquisite taste, and the orchestra’s principal viola-player, Joachim Roewer, asserted himself with a sensitivity to match, and without raising his instrument’s throaty voice in the way many viola-players seem to feel necessary. The central Andante didn’t gell as well as might have been expected. The greatest pleasures of this performance came in the balanced interplay of the soloists in the outer movements.
