Midsummer Night's Dream (exc) - Mendelssohn
Piano Concerto No 1 - Mendelssohn
Symphony No 4 (Italian) - Mendelssohn
Over the years, Dubliners have come to expect a concert featuring Howard Shelley, whether at the keyboard or on the podium (or rolling both roles into one), to be an occasion of rewarding music-making.
Last night's all-Mendelssohn tea-time programme with the National Symphony Orchestra gratifyingly extended the pattern.
There's nothing particularly striking about his style. There's no attitudinising, no showmanship. If you had to put a single word on it, you would call it musicianly. And intelligent, alert musicianliness is a good resource for unlocking the special atmosphere of Mendelssohn's magical incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Playing the First Piano Concerto, back towards the audience and with a lidless piano, brought a double loss of focus - a hollowing and distancing of tone from the piano and a removal of the performer's facial expressions from the sight of most of the audience. Yet, even with these slight drawbacks, there was an ebullience in the delivery of this most outgoing of minor key concertos which swept all before it. And the sunny Italian Symphony shared the same agreeable performance characteristics as the earlier works.
