Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
June 3, 2015

At the heart of this programme combining symphonic staples of Czech repertoire with a modern American violin concerto is the notion of narrative within music. “If you know what the piece is about it’s wonderful, but if you don’t it’s still narrating,” said conductor David Robertson at the pre-concert discussion. Whether you believe music can describe in any such way is entirely up to you, but I’m in Robertson’s camp on this one. Going into the concert with minimal preconceptions of these works, I could easily apply the conductor’s statement and understand that a story was unfolding within the music.

In Dvorák’s Seventh Symphony the violins, though clear and with a brilliant, crisp staccato throughout, at times dominated over woodwind textures, and even left their lower-tuned relatives of the string family sounding blurred. By the end of the Scherzo, tutti passages obtained some clarity, with the climax delivered confidently, ending strongly on an exuberant D Major chord. Associate Principal Oboe Shefali Pryor’s phrasing at the end of the Poco adagio deserves a special mention, as does...