Diverge and Merge - Grainne Mulvey
Violin Concerto - Sibelius
Symphony No 4 - Mahler
Grainne Mulvey's Diverge and Merge made an interesting opening to last night's NCH concert. The work used a huge orchestra, so an immense range of colour was at her disposal; but there was more merging than diverging and, as painters well know, the more colours you mix together the duller the final shade.
It was hard on her to be played alongside such masters of orchestration as Sibelius and Mahler, composers who had an almost uncanny ability to exploit the particular timbres of each group of instruments, strings, woodwind, brass and percussion, and even in orchestral tutti the various components could be discerned. Mulvey's work sounded more experimental, as if she were continually wondering what would be the result if a sound "x" were played against a sound "y".
Sibelius's Violin Concerto, with its strange mixture of northern reticence in the orchestral part and an almost Viennese sentimentality in the very difficult part for solo violin, needs a Paganini to convince, and in Kurt Nikkanen just such a skilled interpreter was found. The conductor, Takuo Yuasa, dovetailed the Finnish and Viennese elements and never allowed the work to become soft-centred, and Nikkanen was masterly in his pacing.
Mahler's Fourth may be his shortest symphony, but even it can sound long-winded at times. Although the many speed changes in the first movement were cunningly handled, the second, though played as marked ("in easy motion, without haste"), was slightly lack-lustre, and the third was in danger of wallowing in its own opulence. The finale, a setting of a children's song, with Mary Hegarty as soprano soloist, was lively and light-hearted, Mahler at his most kittenish, and a model of delicacy and precision.