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Patrick Seeber Concert Review

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The RTE National Symphony Orchestra at The National

Concert Hall, Dublin, 20th February 2015.

The RTE Symphony Orchestra treated their audience to one of

the highlight programmes for this season. With the last minute

substitution of conductor Jonas Alber, the night begins as a group of

musicians, masters of their craft, undertake the huge challenge,

with the selected programme for the evening.

The opener of the programme, Beethovens Fidelio

Overture, initiates a theme for the evening, one of grand,

triumphant and jubilant German music. The romantic era works are

displayed in traditional, but nonetheless impressive renditions. The

work serves as a superb beginning, being a fitting work from

Beethovens repertoire as its the overture for his only Opera.

Leading into Beethovens Violin Concerto in D, dominated by

soloist Helena Wood. Her musical tone, rhythmic awareness and

overall presence, craft a strong performance of this once

underappreciated work. However despite this the work as a whole

felt, at moments dragged out, monotonous and dull. This is largely

due to the extensive length of this work. The long runtime, solo

virtuosic moments and Woods very cinematic, musical expressions

to convey the music, does nothing to aid this issue. While it feels

insensitive to critique the highly accomplished performance or the

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quality of the performance, the work nonetheless feels strained,

particularly during the second movement. In a way the first half felt

far more spectacular then the second. It is hard to deny Woods

majestic, musical moments highlight her talent and are entertaining

to view, yet the length of the sections, coupled with the intense

nature of the performance, left it feeling intimidating and tedious for

those of us not enticed purely by virtuosity.

After the interlude, were presented with Strauss Eine

Alpensinfonie. This is an extremely lush work, noted for its use of

the large orchestra, atypical arrangement, as well as being the final

of Strauss tone poems. The work calls for around one hundred

musicians, which gives the stage a wondrous feeling, as it feels

enormous, expansive and full. The music perpetuates throughout

the work, with the resonance coming across from every direction,

filling the room. This crafts a sense of anticipation for whats to

follow, and keeps you engaged as youre constantly, trying to

understand which instrument forms the sounds being performed.

The performance was truly a marvel, with such a wide pallet of

sounds from huge organ chords to quiet harp arpeggiation and even

the use of a wind machine. In particular the horn section pushes out

a huge tone across large sections of the piece, taking the centre

stage for the work and acting as one of the highlights for the

evening. In full this work proved more engaging then the entire first

half, with its overwhelming, magnificent sound.

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Overall the night proved to be a massively enjoyable as a

whole even despite having to call in Alber at the eleventh hour, to

conduct an extremely demanding programme. While I felt the choice

of work created some negative points for the night, its hard to deny

Woods marvellous talent when performing the Concerto. This along

with the colossal performance by the RTE National Symphony

Orchestra of Eine Alpensinfornie proved to be a definite highlight

night, for the season.

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