NCH, Dublin
Bach – Mass in B minor.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra broke ground on two fronts on Friday. It offered a major choral work by Bach, his Mass in B minor, for the first time in decades, in which it was joined by the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir, which was performing a major work by Bach for the first time ever. And in a late-night concert following the Bach, pianist Finghin Collins made his début as the orchestra’s first-ever associate artist.
By international standards there’s nothing novel in either development.
Symphony orchestras around the world, which had for a while ceded Bach to the early music specialists, have again been embracing the great works of the 18th century in their repertoire, often with specialist conductors, who were once their rivals, at the helm. And chamber music concerts, integrated into the planning of orchestral seasons, may be new to Dublin, but they are regularly encountered elsewhere.
The good news for the orchestra is that Dubliners clearly have an appetite for both developments. The B minor Mass was packed, and sufficient numbers remained – or turned up specially – for the late-night gig to make many a chamber music promoter green with envy.
And what of the performances themselves? Well, Nicholas Kraemer is clearly a man with definite ideas about the Bach mass. He favoured brisk speeds and pointed energy, even to the point of discomfiting his choral singers, and sometimes even a soloist.
He encouraged the orchestral players to pare back their vibrato to a minimum, though he allowed the winds a little more freedom in this regard than the strings. And he worked the choir hard, not just through challenging speeds, but also by making sure that internal balances were set on musical considerations rather than, as often turns out to be the case, on vocal comfort or numerical strength.
Kraemer’s was a performance which, at its best, achieved considerable expressive traction, but it also carried the suggestion that it might have shown even more had it managed to flex a bit more and not to sound so frequently under stress.
Among the vocal soloists the women (Malin Christensson, soprano, and Alison Browner, mezzo soprano) made a far stronger impression than the men (Seán Clayton, tenor, and Matthew Hargreaves, bass). Their duets were among the evening’s high points. But better still were Browner’s solos, secure and true, delivered with the sharpness of outline that’s usually the preserve of instrumentalists, yet at the same time carrying the special communicative edge that only a voice can achieve.
The late-night performance, in which Collins teamed up with the RTÉ NSO Wind Principals, was an occasion of pure pleasure. Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet is a piece in which everyone is called upon to shine – and when it comes to Mozart’s wind writing, that counts for a lot. And on Friday it was given a performance in which everyone did actually shine.
