Capriccio espagnol - Rimsky-Korsakov
Symphonie espagnole - Lalo
El amor brujo - Falla
Bolero - Ravel
For the opening concert of the "major celebration of Spanish and Catalan culture", which is at the heart of this year's Belfast Festival, the festival reached into its musical lucky-bag and came up with a Waterfront Hall programme of works by two Frenchmen, a Russian and a Spaniard, performed by a Belfast orchestra with British and German soloists under a London-born conductor of Hungarian extraction.
The implied value judgement on contemporary Spanish composers and musicians could hardly, in the circumstances, be seen as the most tactful of gestures. However, Gilbert Varga, music director of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Euskadi in San Sebastian, secured performances from the Ulster Orchestra which offered much to enjoy.
His approach was musicianly and measured, always allowing the music room to breathe and showing often meticulous refinement in rendition of orchestral detail. In Capriccio espagnol he may not have set the pulse racing, as so many conductors try to, but he savoured the brightly-lit orchestration for all its sparkling delights.
The German violinist Antje Weithaas endeavoured to project individuality of personality in Lalo's Symphonie espagnole but the greater the restraint she showed, the more effective her playing became.
Christine Cairns was the soloist in Falla's El amor brujo. The super-charged vehemence required for the Cancion del amor dolido (Song of suffering love) did not appear to be part of her armoury, and, in general, her vocal presence was on the weak side. But Varga secured some ravishing effects as he gloried in the delectable colours and textures of Falla's score.
In spite of the consistency of his responses, Varga's approach was more successful moment by moment than in conveying the solidity and substance of the bigger picture. Nowhere was this more evident than in Ravel's Bolero, which took quite a while to settle fully, after which it delivered exactly what was expected.
