Symphony No 2 - Schubert
Piano Concerto No 1 - Mendelssohn
Symphony No 4 (Tragic) -Schubert
The Orchestra of St Cecilia's annual November concerts at the National Concert Hall are this year coupling Schubert symphonies with piano concertos featuring Finghin Collins as soloist. The three-concert series, which began on Wednesday, is being given in memory of the much-loved conductor Bryden Thomson, who died ten years ago, on November 14th 1991.
The opening programme under Howard Shelley offered the Second and Fourth Symphonies, with Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G minor sandwiched in between. And such was the nature of the performances that the Mendelssohn came across as the meat in the sandwich. The concerto, although dedicated to a 17-year-old pianist, Delphine von Shauroth, who had caught the 21-year-old composer's eye for more than musical reasons, was premiΦred by Mendelssohn himself at a concert in Berlin in 1831. An early biographer, WA Lampadius, left a description of the characteristic features of Mendelssohn as performer, "a very elastic touch, a wonderful trill, elegance, roundness, firmness, perfect articulation, strength, and tenderness, each in its needed place".
These days, it's the brilliance of the writing in the First Concerto that pianists seem to find most stimulating, and Collins's easy virtuosity conformed to the norm with nicely rounded tone and free-flowing passage-work. There is, I think, rather more to be got from the work by those rare players who aim for greater expressive detail within the larger paragraphs. But there was no sense at all that, within his chosen range, Collins's performance was anything other than a job consistently well done.
That's rather more than can be said for the OSC's handling of Schubert under Shelley. The two symphonies sounded rough in detail and awkward in balance, and were given with a generalised brio that was not sufficiently strong to overcome the many shortcomings of the playing. Unusually, the orchestra's sense of focus was altogether stronger in the concerto.
The OSC's Schubert series continues on Wednesdays, November 14th (concerto by Mozart) and 21st (concerto by Beethoven).
