Though the visitation of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra happened just over a week ago, we have a more permanent influence from that part of the world in the person of Alan Buribayev, the Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, who hails from Kazakhstan.
“From Russia with love” might have been an apt title for this evening’s performance from the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra on the Irish leg of their tour, for this was a concert designed to showcase all that is best in Russian music both in interpretation and in composition.
This was Nikolay Khozyainov’s first return visit to Dublin after having deservedly won first prize in the Dublin International Piano Competition last year. I particularly recall a brilliant and compelling interpretation of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in the final. Consequently, expectations were very high for this evening’s performance.
If Benjamin Grosvenor were a wine, his tasting notes might read something like: “an outstanding early vintage, this is already a fine, well-balanced red, with subtlety of flavour. Can be quaffed now though should mature exceedingly well.
There was more than a little drama at Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja’s sold-out concert recital in Dublin’s National Concert Hall this evening. He was joined by Irish soprano Claudia Boyle and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Proinnsías Ó Duinn.
With an opera like Carmen, one never knows exactly what to expect. Recent trends (with English National Opera, for instance) have been to up the levels of raunchiness in an attempt to recreate the original scandale which this depiction of lower-class immorality in 19th-century Seville met with in Paris in 1875.
