Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 21 May 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: David Gray & Paul Gray.

“After a lack-lustre start, this concert picked up pace and energy.”

Delius – The Walk to Paradise Garden

Beethoven – Piano Concerto No 5 in E Flat major (Emperor)

Smetana – Vltava

Dvořák – Symphony No 8 in G major

Delius’s poignant and melancholy ‘The Walk to Paradise Garden’ seemed, in some ways, an odd and rather downbeat way to start this concert. A wistful piece, it depicts the lovers in the composer’s opera ‘A Village Romeo and Juliet’ journeying to a pub, a symbolic place of escape, before they decide to drown themselves. Conductor, Steven Mercurio, captured the mood of subdued yearning and the strings swept thorough the surging melodic lines nicely, but at times they could have played with a bit more body.

Lack of body on the part of the orchestra also rather let down the performance of Beethoven’s majestic ‘Piano Concerto No 5’. Soloist, Mark Bebbington, gave a grand and very robust performance, playing with quite extreme tonal brilliance. This rather overpowered the band in the opening movement; indeed, woodwind solos were barely audible against the power of the piano. And the orchestra on the whole lacked presence and lustre.

Balance improved during the Adagio. Bebbington’s reading was exquisitely delicate and lyrical and there was more of a sense of conversation between soloist and orchestra. The final movement was full of energy and colour; and this much, much more like it!

After the interval, the orchestra seemed more at home with music from their homeland. Smetana’s ‘Vltava’ rolled along with verve and momentum – rather like the river it depicts - and the orchestra gave a strong, full-bodied sound. One sensed that the players had finally found the hall’s acoustic and were starting to use it.

Things just got better from there, with a performance of Dvořák’s ‘Symphony No 8’ that seemed to come from a place of deep and instinctive understanding. Mercurio stirred in the love, and the orchestra responded to his open-hearted, good-natured reading with gusto. Vividly detailed, incisive and well-balanced throughout, this was the kind of playing one expects from a national orchestra.

Two dance-based encores brought the concert to a lively conclusion.

Conductor – Steven Mercurio

Piano – Mark Bebbington