NCH, Dublin: Osvaldo Golijov — Last Round; Barber — Violin Concerto; Mahler — Symphony No 1.
Osvaldo Golijov’s 1996 Last Round was written as a tribute to his fellow-countryman, the Argentinian composer and bandoneon-player, Astor Piazzolla. He began it in 1991 after hearing of Piazzolla’s stroke, but didn’t actually finish it until 1996, four years after the great tango-king died.
It made a strange opener to the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s concert, when Brazilian conductor Roberto Minczuk opted to perform the piece as a chamber work with nine players – two string quartets, separated by a double bass – rather than with the full orchestral strings.
The effect was slightly odd, as if Golijov had written a cut-down orchestral piece rather than a beefy chamber work. The music’s grinding, stomping build-ups didn’t quite come off, and the flash and panache weren’t quite on target. The orchestra’s first centenary tribute to American composer Samuel Barber (1910-81) came in a beautifully controlled performance of the 1939 Violin Concerto by St Petersburg-born Eugene Ugorski, a protégé of Valery Gergiev.
Ugorski gave a finely-balanced account of this romantically-inclined work, keeping the music sweet but not sentimental, and the general restraint of his manner, happily, was matched by Minczuk. Ugorski’s weakest moment came when he went over-the-top by laying so heavily into the big tune of the slow movement. But he showed spunk aplenty in the right way in the wild, skittering dance of the finale.
Minczuk’s approach to Mahler’s First Symphony was on the lines of the child in the proverbial toy shop. He gloried in its every effect, from the haunting high whistles of the nature picture opening, through the seductive swooning of the second movement, the grotesque funeral march of the third, and the screaming violence that cuts through the finale. If that sounds like a recipe for cheap thrills, that’s not actually how it came across on Friday. Minczuk’s approach, buttressed by strong playing from the orchestra, was not only gorgeous from moment to moment, but cogently exciting and excitingly cogent, too.
