NCH, Dublin
Sibelius
– Symphony No 3.
Zemlinsky– Lyric Symphony.
Hannu Lintu’s programme with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra on Friday was an occasion not so much of contrasts as of polarities.
Just over 100 years ago, the composers Sibelius and Mahler met in Helsinki; Sibelius the advocate of musical containment, of symphonies that favoured “severity of style and the profound logic that created an inner connection among all the motifs”; Mahler the man who maintained that “a symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything”.
On Friday, Sibelian economy and logic was represented by his Third Symphony of 1907, an avowedly classical work written at a time when the musical world was largely concerned with other directions.
A rather more Mahlerian view was taken by the LyricSymphony that Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) wrote in 1923. Zemlinsky was close to the members of the Second Viennese School, and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erdewas a direct model for his most famous work, a symphony "in seven songs" which, like the Mahler, turned Eastward for its texts, to the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Lintu’s handling of the Sibelius was a model of clarity and control. The work is something of a Cinderella among the composer’s symphonies, and it’s a full 18 years since the NSO last played it. The cogency and comprehensiveness of Lintu’s handling of its musical argument, and the sheer beauty he brought to its colouring and texture, made that neglect seem almost incomprehensible.
Zemlinsky's LyricSymphony has had many powerful advocates in recent decades, including the baritones Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Thomas Hampson, as well as a host of leading conductors. And the piece is now also copiously documented through recordings.
In concert, though, it's something of a tall order, with a degree of full-on orchestral writing which is extremely challenging for its two soloists. It deals with the anticipation and the ecstasy of love, as well as what the Guardianhas suggested are "insights into post-coital tristesse".
Lintu’s concern with the music’s chromatic tracery was perhaps too complete, blurring distinctions between foreground and background in ways that made the writing seem more convoluted than was necessary.
Soprano Amanda Roocroft often sounded squally as she rode over the orchestral massiveness. Baritone Wolfgang Holzmair was altogether more effective, intense in his rapture and effective in his resignation.
