MUSIC
SIBELIUS' VIOLIN CONCERTO ★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, until September 2
This program looked good on paper: an overture rarity, featuring five minutes' worth of Janacek neurasthenia; the great violin concerto headed by the 1980 first prizewinner of the Sibelius Competition Helsinki; and the benign folksiness of Dvorak's penultimate symphony – a melodic bath from start to finish.
Guest violinist Viktoria Mullova.Credit:Foto Puck
Yet Friday evening impressed as uneven in output, flashes of brilliance and rich instrumental colour interspersed with slapdash attention to balance and an intrusive stodginess of texture, very noticeable in the usually coruscating pages of Sibelius' solitary concerto.
Viktoria Mullova fronted this singular work with convincing determination and excellent clarity of output, even in those passages for the violin's lower strings where many another player over-bows and muddies the flow with excessive emphasis.
But she was hard-pressed to be audible at some key-points, like the finale's harmonics sequence, conductor James Gaffigan often allowing the horns to weigh in at full bore, which slowed down the first movement's fluency. Still, the work's final pages proved an unexpected delight for Mullova's penetrating brilliance.
Janacek's Jealousy, originally intended as the overture to his opera Jenufa, is a quick collation of motives that eventually settle into a broad melody before a brusque conclusion. Here also, the brass choirs enjoyed high encouragement, making the experience more hefty than anticipated.
But it's a slight piece, unlike the Dvorak Symphony No. 8, this night's most successful accomplishment, thanks to the MSO's reliably rich woodwind section and obvious enjoyment shown throughout by a sterling sympathetic engagement from the ensemble's strings.
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