NCH, Dublin

Wagner– Siegfried's Rhine Journey Strauss– Horn Concerto No 1 Bruckner– Symphony No 7

Seldom is the work of Richard Strauss the lightest music of an evening. But here, his youthful Horn Concerto No 1 was pitted against some formidable heavyweights of Germanic Romanticism. By way of a taster for the symphony programme, a pre-concert organ recital (presented by Pipeworks festival) included Max Reger’s thundering Second Sonata of 1901. Organist and Reger aficionado David Adams despatched its superabundance of notes with a mixture of athletic discipline and Gothic melodrama.

Paying a return visit to the NCH was Brazilian guest conductor Roberto Minczuk, whose recent measures to overhaul the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira have caused considerable controversy. Still, there wasn’t a breath of disharmony to be detected in his dealings with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

On the contrary, a highly polished account of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey showed Minczuk’s real feeling for the lustrous textures of Wagner. There was energetic precision, too, in the more modest scoring of the Strauss concerto, where soloist Cormac Ó hAodáin – despite a few fluffs of the kind that are an occupational hazard for horn players – valiantly kept pace and poise.

Neither conductor nor orchestra could be held entirely responsible for the deflated conclusion to Bruckner’s Symphony No 7. Rather than being intent on rescuing the finale from its own fragmented argumentation, Minczuk appeared resigned to it.

His approach was altogether more persuasive in the lengthy opening movements, where assured paragraphing and finely differentiated tempos meant that the vast Adagio in particular seemed not a minute too long.