Michael Dervanreviews the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra performance at the National Concert Hall

Lloyd Webber, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra/Wit, NCH, Dublin
Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet Dvorák - Cello Concerto Shostakovich - Symphony No 5

THE WARSAW Philharmonic Orchestra's programme at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday had all the appearance of musical orthodoxy, but ended up as a rather unusual musical sandwich.

The greatest strangeness was in the filling, a peculiarly understated performance of Dvorák's Cello Concerto with soloist Julian Lloyd Webber. This concerto often drives cellists into vulgar overdrive. Lloyd Webber approached it from the opposite end of the scale, almost like chamber music, and with a light, sometimes almost dried-out tone. This left the brunt of the music's emotionalism to the orchestra, a burden which it carried in style.

There was an appealing, unfettered romanticism in conductor Antoni Wit's music-making throughout the evening. Dublin concert-goers with long memories will remember a similar approach in many of the concerts of the late Albert Rosen. But Wit and his Polish players have a finesse, an ear for dynamic contrasts and a flexibility that are still not often heard in the weekly concerts of the RTÉ NSO.

The effect on Wednesday was to bring the worlds of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony closer than might have been expected, downplaying some of the chillier aspects of the Shostakovich in favour of emotional warmth, and emphasizing a ballsy, Mahlerian grotesquerie in the scherzo.