Something unusual happened Friday at Gates Concert Hall.
Camerata Ireland – a chamber orchestra founded by Belfast native Barry Douglas – filled the stage in a welcome alternative to the solo recitalists, duos and various smaller chamber music ensembles that have paraded through the gilded hall for the past two seasons.
The configuration of 40 Irish musicians delivered a decidedly symphonic program of classical staples, plus a couple of accessible contemporary works.
In Beethoven’s serene Piano Concerto No. 4, Douglas asserted himself as soloist and conductor. In both roles, Douglas – winner of the Van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky international piano competitions in the mid-1980s – revealed the pensive character of the work, if not its improvisatory possibilities. His playing and conducting were often heavy-handed, compromising the lyrical and intimate setting of the G major concerto.
In the slow second movement, the strings effectively captured a sense of nervous agitation intended to be soothed by the piano solo. But this dialogue never reached the depth of contrast and ultimate resolution between the austere part of the orchestra and what should have been the docile, imploring voice of the piano.
Despite Douglas’ staid interpretation and blurry pedaling through several passages, the mischievous final rondo movement was energetically rendered, successfully communicating a sense of subtle, sparkling wit over mere boisterousness.
In Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major – premiered in 1813 at a concert to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded in battle against Napoleon – Douglas’ rigid and diffident direction didn’t keep the musicians from evincing a slowly burning introduction that ascended into a brilliant, rousing vivace that transformed dusk into dawn.
The famous, pulsing second movement was precisely rendered, the melodies and countermelodies accumulating into a forceful tidal wave of sound. Yet here again, Douglas might have elaborated on the opening pianissimo in the low strings.
But the finely calibrated strings of Camerata Ireland had ample opportunity to shine in countryman John Kinsella’s “Nocturne for String Orchestra.” Here, Douglas was more at home, provoking the work’s dark, brooding mood.
Similarly, Douglas embraced the intricacy of Elliott Carter’s “Elegy for String Orchestra.” With appropriate restraint, the strings voiced the work’s understated melodic arch and contrapuntal themes.
In the first of two encores, Camerata Ireland performed Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s romantic and buoyant waltz from his “Serenade for Strings.” The graceful work serves as a sort of homage to Mozart’s serenades, and the chamber group easily and cohesively expressed its rich sonorities. While the rhythmic, dancing serenade is hardly Mozartian, it does follow classical form and sensibility, a distinction that Douglas obviously understood.
In a nod to tradition, the concert concluded with a soft and sweeping rendition of “The Londonderry Air,” more commonly known as “Danny Boy.”
