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Stoffelsma, Youth Orchestra of The Netherlands/Hempel
NCH, Dublin
Martijn Padding - Kier. Weber - Clarinet Concerto No 1. Mussorgsky/ Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition
The guaranteed high turnover in the membership of youth orchestras means that the character of an ensemble can change significantly from year to year, as key players arrive or move on.
It has been four years since the Netherlands Youth Orchestra (JeugdOrkest Nederland) was last heard at the National Concert Hall. Certain characteristics remain.
The orchestra's contributions to Weber's First Clarinet Concerto had a much greater sense of period-performance awareness than those of the admirably solid soloist, Arno Stoffelsma. In 2001 the same situation prevailed in another early 19th-century concerto, Beethoven's for violin.
And, once again, there were some issues of balance which caused the musical thread to be occasionally lost, drowned out by stronger voices with less important messages to convey. But the playing of the major work in the second half, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in the familiar orchestration by Ravel, was rougher than anything I remember from the orchestra's previous concert.
The performance was full to the brim of in-your-face fire and enthusiasm. When conductor Jurjen Hempel gestured encouragingly, the players responded, and with interest.
Sadly, the results, however visceral in effect, were often uncomfortably approximate in musical and technical detail. This was, ultimately, a riotous performance of the piece, wild, unkempt, and wide of a great many marks bar raw excitement.
The opening work, the specially commissioned Kier by Martijn Padding, was written to exploit "what young musicians do so well: play fast!". The translations offered for the title were "opening," "chink," "ajar", and the piece kept the players on their toes, in an elaborately-wrought game of chase, with a strong contemporary flavour sustained by the skilfully-judged orchestration.
Michael Dervan
