ONE day I am going to devote an entire essay to a single performance and interpretation of a piece of music.
Most likely it will be Donald Runnicles's shattering reading of Brahms's First Symphony, played on Thursday with electric immediacy by the BBC SSO in possibly the most exhilarating, gripping live performance of the work I have heard.
It was swift and forward-moving at every turn, thoroughly Romantic in its language and gesture, wholly non-indulgent in its expression and totally Classical in its pacing, structure and delivery. I'd say it was miraculous, but it wasn't. It was man-made, Runnicles-made and delivered at high speed by a BBC SSO in stupendous form: the revelation of a completely familiar musical object was shocking.
It was the climax of a wonderful programme that heatured the premiere of Detlev Glanert's brilliant Brahms-Fantasie, a homage laced with the DNA of Brahms, but very much its own man, the dark, rich Alto Rhapsody with Sarah Connolly's gorgrous, chocolatey mezzo in perfect balance with the super-subtle male voices of Christopher Bell's Edinburgh Festival Chorus, and the immaculately gauged playfulness of Schumann's Fourth Symphony which, in its original version, sang and lilted its way off the page.
A great night to be a music lover and to be alive to witness this magic from Runnicles and his orchestra.
HHHHH
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