Friday’s concert at Dublin’s National Concert Hall opened with a bang: specifically, the stomping of orchestral shoes in the Irish premiere of Anna Clyne’s compact but exciting work Restless Oceans. Under the precise baton of conductor Anna Rakitina, the National Symphony Orchestra delivered a performance where jagged rhythms collided with low, wordless vocal lines in the strings. The resulting tension was immediately gripping. The effect was novel, though at times the hushed vocal accompaniment struggled to project fully, suggesting a larger choral force might have given these lines greater weight.
Mairéad Hickey assumed the spotlight in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, delivering a performance of luminous clarity. Fiendish double-stops and lightning-fast arpeggios were dispatched as if child’s play. Creating a glowing sound-world was of prime importance to her as she imbued her glorious rich melodies high on the G string with a humming vibrato. Without ever lapsing into sentimentality, she unfurled the delicate tendrils of the main melody with tenderness at first and then with burgeoning passion. The NSO responded with precision and added vitality. A few moments in the first movement might have benefited from a touch more coquettish playfulness, but this did little to diminish the overall impact.
The Canzonetta revealed a more intimate palette. Hickey etched her sepia-tinted melody in hushed umber tones that seemed to fill the hall, while the finale burst forth in rustic vigour. The gypsy-inflected main theme sprang to life with robust G string playing, culminating in ricocheting double-stops that left the audience exhilarated.
After the interval the mood shifted from the romantic excitement of Tchaikovsky to the Stalinist brutality of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5 in D minor. Rakitina shaped each line with attentive control, allowing the opening dotted rhythms to emerge as ominous declarations rather than abrupt explosions, their slow burn voiced through muttering cellos and mournful violins.The march that followed was grotesque – a burlesque laced with irony featuring rasping tuba and the cries of straining strings. In the calm after the storm, horn lines soared confidently into high registers while a ghostly flute drifted above, surveying the devastations of Stalinist purges.
The second movement’s sardonic Ländler found the cellos delivering savage cuts, with woodwinds dancing in gleeful counterpoint. Moments of violin solo shimmered with drunken glissandos, highlighting the quirky character without exaggeration. A miasma of sorrow hung around the Largo, although Rakitina imbued some hope with the polyphonic lines of the strings. The passionate high declarations on the violins were harrowing, a melody of despair, while the oboe hovered above the hushed tremolandos.
In a twinkling, the gloom lifted with the brazen brass and bustling strings of the finale. This was a rollicking account which took the audience by the lapels with the sonic boom of timpani and brass. The peace of the mid-section with the flute intertwining with the other woodwinds was short-lived as the ominous return of the opening theme was heard in rumbling brass.
