At the end of the 1990s, Cardiff audiences at BBC National Orchestra of Wales concerts were increasingly being won over to a challenging new, often very modern, repertoire. That is apparently no longer the case and, on this occasion at least, it would seem that the name Schoenberg is still enough to strike fear into the hearts of prospective listeners and keep them well away.
Would the knowledge that his early music, which includes the tone poem Verklärte Nacht (played here) is the ultimate expression of high romanticism, or that Schoenberg himself would have liked nothing better than to have been thought of as "a better sort of Tchaikovsky" help mitigate against such prejudice? Not necessarily. Prejudice dies hard and, if it does, is anyway in danger of growing back.
Perhaps it was the dispiriting effect of playing to a distinctly thin audience that prompted this less than ecstatic performance of Verklärte Nacht. The BBC NOW strings were well up to its technical demands, but Richard Hickox's vigorous beating of the pulse could not prevent some untidy junctures, neither could it reach the emotional heart of this work. Moments of real delicacy and finesse from the solo string lines elicited sympathetic responses from their colleagues, but still the deep, transfiguring beauty of the music, depicting the transforming power of love, was somehow lacking.
While the notion of a dark woodland night as benevolent, if mystical, protection is fundamental to the Schoenberg, in Bruckner's Fourth - subtitled "A Romantic Symphony" - the forest atmospherics and the horn calls that dominate the thematic material represent an altogether different world, where it is Bruckner's certainty of that world being God-given that makes the music so robust and firmly grounded. Hickox appeared more comfortable in this place and his decision to realign the strings (first and second violins on either side, violas and cellos in the middle) certainly made for a more integrated sound, with the viola theme in the andante second movement emerged with an engaging warmth and directness. In the scherzo, the resounding brass and woodwind could hardly fail to be stirring and, even if it was not totally awe-inspiring, the finale brought grandeur enough.
