Cello Concerto - Elgar
Symphony No 2 (Resurrection) - Mahler
The under-18s branch of the National Youth Orchestra has always been more generous about programming concertos than the NYO itself. So Monday's inclusion of the Elgar Cello Concerto was a welcome departure from practice, and came at a time when the NSO had recently programmed the work, allowing for comparisons to be made between the approaches of Maria Kliegel and Julian Lloyd Webber.
One of the major differences between these two players is that when Kliegel seeks an effect of imperious declamation at high volume she can achieve it straightaway, whereas Lloyd Webber has neither the tone nor the presence to manage it to the same extent. In the Elgar concerto, this works entirely to Lloyd Webber's advantage, limiting the scale of the playing and keeping him within a range where the music speaks much more freely. The Elgar is a particularly challenging work to co-ordinate.
The NYO under Alexander Anissimov didn't manage to anticipate every twist and turn of the soloist, but the sense of the cello so finely balanced against Elgar's always carefully-graded orchestral textures provided a pleasure on Monday that had been absent in the earlier, altogether more insistent performance.
Anissimov's reading of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony was full of finely-worked detail. He made demands of chamber-music-like intimacy which the players of the NYO have not often been asked to meet over the years. And they responded with playing that was coloured and contoured with special care.
The string section seems to be the crowning glory of this year's crop of young musicians, the lower brass often resplendent too, the woodwind showing rather more signs of frailty in the face of the challenges posed by both conductor and music. In pursuing his detailed course, and with speeds that sometimes seemed over-cautious, Anissimov did at times rather lose sight of the bigger picture. This was particularly so in the second movement, where the sense of inertia remained uncomfortably high. Contralto Patricia Bardon in the fourth movement Urlicht was pointed and poignant. The partnership with soprano Franzita Whelan was finely-judged.
And Anissimov brought in the massed choirs (Belfast Philharmonic Choir, Tallaght Choral Society, Cor Cois Abhann, St Malachy's College Choir, Belfast) in the finale with the gentlest of hushes before driving to a roaring conclusion that brought the capacity house to its feet.
