{TABLE} Violin Concerto in G, K216 ........ Mozart Symphony No 7 ..................... Bruckner {/TABLE} THE German violinist Christoph Poppen first appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1992 (in Dublin and on tour in Germany) in one of Spohr's concertos for violin and harp. For his return visit, at the National Concert Hall last night, he played the third of the five violin concertos Mozart wrote in 1775 at the age of 19.
On the evidence of last night's concert (I didn't hear his earlier NCH performance) is not a natural Mozartian. His broad sense of scale (working with a sensibly reduced string section under Kasper de Roo) was well adjusted to the work, but his sense of proportion in the balance of phrasing was altogether less sound. The obvious enjoyment he took in his playing did not translate into characterful, pointed music making and the overall effect of the performance was unsatisfyingly anaemic.
One of the first works conducted in Dublin by Kasper de Roo was a Bruckner symphony, the Fourth. His second approach to this area of the repertoire - now as principal conductor of the NSO - showed some of the same strengths and weaknesses as the earlier performance.
The strengths are in general those of care and cleanliness, the weakness a certain clinicality with which everything is negotiated. De Roo contrives Brucknerian sound without Brucknerian breathing, and his feeling for timbre is more acute than his capture of the music's idiosyncratically weighted rhythmic tread or his ability to secure the appropriately rounded sonority of attack. In spite of his obvious attentiveness to detail, the true spirit - and essential spirituality - of Bruckner seemed once again to be missing.
