NCH, Dublin

Elgar– Cello Concerto

Brahms– German Requiem

Both works in this programme defied audience expectations on their original opening nights.

Expectations on October 26th, 1919 were for a new Elgar concerto that would follow in the lyrical, heroic footsteps of the Violin Concerto from nine years earlier. Instead, the new work reflected the times. “Everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet is gone,” said the composer, emotionally and artistically shattered by the first World War.

And yet, in its reflectiveness and darkness, its economical orchestration, all of which had so disappointed the first-night audience, the Cello Concerto – Elgar’s last major work – evokes not only the desolation of mass human conflict, but warmth, consolation and hope.

It was these intensely human features that young cellist Gautier Capuçon communicated in a performance of beautiful sincerity. His tone was firm and voice-like, and he tapped into the music’s emotional content without resorting to the various tropes of string solo playing.

Expectations were likewise challenged on December 1st, 1867 at the partial première (movements 1-3) of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem. As well as “the intentional avoidance of everything sensuous”, Brahms had also intentionally avoided the text of the Latin requiem Mass, instead choosing his own texts directly from the Bible, and these in German.

Crucially, the resulting uniqueness of the Brahms among requiem settings was not reflected on this occasion by the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir. The German texts lacked fully committed engagement, something that was inadvertently emphasised by special effort in articulation in one or two passages, which consequently highlighted the lacklustre articulation everywhere else. This was a pity, given the choir’s fine sound and balance and mostly secure intonation. It was also unnecessary, given the choir’s far superior readings of this work on previous occasions.

Responsibility lies between guest chorus-master Jeremy Haneman and conductor and early music choral specialist Paul McCreesh, whose judicious speeds and balancing were wasted in a performance where the text was not centre-stage. Among his more prominent innovations, some were effective – splitting the second violins to the right – and others less so – placing soloists Benedict Nelson and Mhairi Lawson on the balcony, where they just sounded remote.