{Table} Piano Concerto in E flat, K482 .......................... Mozart

Symphony No 7 (Leningrad) ................................ Shostakovich {/Table} IT'S really hard to know what to make of Shostakovich's wartime Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad, named after the besieged city in which it was begun. Its four movements originally carried titles War, Evocation, Native Expanse and Victory and the enemy pictured within was understood to be Hitler. Solomon Volkov's book of Shostakovich "memoirs", Testimony, suggests that Stalin rather than Hitler is to be regarded as the target. But it's hardly to be expected that the wildly overblown music will sound any the less banal for a change in targeted dictator.

The work was heard in Dublin seven years ago, from the RTESO under Colman Pearce. It would be hard to imagine anything further from Mr Pearce's bludgeoning approach than the sure pacing and finely gauged balances secured from the National Symphony Orchestra under Kasper de Roo last night, in what was the finest performance I've heard from him since he introduced himself to Dublin audiences through Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in 1989.

Under guest leader Elaine Clarke the strings had a breadth of tone which ensured their audibility was retained in the face of some of the fiercest of brass onslaughts, and there was consistently, through all sections of the orchestra, a carefulness of phrasing which brought a welcome sense of shape to the long and relentless first movement.

The sensitivity of approach was well maintained through the remaining movements, the longueurs experienced being an intrinsic element of Shostakovich's punishingly overstretched time scale.

The soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto in E flat, K482, was the Uruguayan, Homero Francesch. It's been a long time since I've encountered so soft pedalled, genteel and wilting an approach to Mozart. His playing was unusually low in definition, reducing Mozart to an unclear and poorly lit form of aural wallpaper.