Egmont Overture - Beethoven
Wesendonk Lieder - Wagner
Symphony No 1 - Brahms
The National Symphony Orchestra is in that most paradoxical of states - at a historic high in potential and in an ongoing trough of achievement.
The orchestra's response to Nicholas Cleobury two weeks ago was a recent nadir, resulting in playing that no self-respecting orchestra should be content to offer to its faithful public. The results achieved under Gunther Herbig last Friday veered to the other end of the scale.
Herbig's was a steadying hand. In Beethoven's Egmont Overture the orchestra's familiar masking patterns (which regularly find subsidiary parts clouding the picture by bleeding into the foreground), were held in abeyance.
Instead, controlled clarity was the order of the day. This was not the most dramatic of performances, but it was full of rewarding detail and the unforced playing in quieter passages brought rare moments of cultured sheen to the tone of the strings.
For all the sterling qualities of the account in Brahms's First Symphony, the work was delivered - in spite of doubled woodwind in louder passages - in a manner too emotionally and tonally lightweight to represent the composer's conception faithfully. In particular, there was a lack of the implacable solidity and exactness of rhythm which is so essential to the successful presentation of this work.
Bernadette Greevy was the soloist in Wagner's Wesen donk Lieder, settings of five poems by Mathilde Wesen donk, with whom the composer had an affair. Greevy's rich mezzo may not have the bloom of yore, but the singer still has a unique vocal presence and communicates with compelling fixity of purpose.
Herbig conjured from the orchestra a flexible accompaniment that ranged from sensual delicacy to fervent climaxes.
The highlight came in the closing song, Traume (Dreams).
