NCH, Dublin

Goldmark – Im Frühling Overture.

Grieg – Piano Concerto.

Bruckner – Symphony No 6.

German conductor Andreas Delfs made his fifth appearance with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at the NCH on Friday. It was the first to disappoint. He just didn't find the vernal energy or bounce in Carl Goldmark's rarely-heard 1889 overture Im Frühling (In Spring). He made the piece sound flaccid and four-square, with only the occasional evocation of birdsong to enliven the mood.

Delfs had shown a lighter touch in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, but the soloist, John O’Conor, was on far from his best form. O’Conor’s middle-of-the-road approach here caused the evergreen music to sound faded, and there were some fallibilities of finger or memory that also got in the way of enjoyment.

The evening’s biggest problem, however, was Delfs’s approach to Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, where the music-making simply lacked the necessary poise and breadth of vision. The phrasing contained too many short-term peaks, the forcefulness of the brass tilted towards vulgarity.

Delfs presented Bruckner as if he could be satisfactorily approached in a spirit of immediate gratification. The outcome was a performance that quickly lost all sense of shape and came to seem interminable.