Music

BBC SSO, City Hall, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

Five stars

WHAT a night on Thursday. and what a blockbuster of a concert from the BBC SSO and conductor Andrew Litton. If ever an orchestra rose to an occasion it was the SSO on Thursday, and they hit everything in that programme with a full-on, bulls-eye performance. Not an orchestral stroke missed the target.

New pieces are vulnerable, of course, as the fast-rising young composer Mark Simpson discovered when his new composition, Israfel, got boo-ed a bit.

Never mind that lot: let 'em boo; who's listening? It was a good piece, ambitious in its canvas, short, but of epic dimensions, wide-screen in its feel, but with a melodic spirit at its heart.

And what do we say about Peter Donohoe's sensational performance of James MacMillan's riotous Second Piano Concerto with, in its first section, some of the fastest piano writing I've ever heard, elsewhere percussive pianism of such pile-driving clout it leaves Bartok sounding tame, music of archaic grace making itself at home with unfamiliar companions, a slurpy sentimental waltz, madcap hi-jinks and the maddest, most drunken reel imaginable? I've been listening to Donohoe for decades: this was the man at the top of his game, at the peak of his power. And right at the heart of this pluralistic concerto was some of MacMillan's most intense string writing, such as we have known since 1989.

It all had to be followed by a classic to round off a stunning night, and Andrew Litton, with the SSO at its most full-blooded, provided the solution with their broad, dark and richly-coloured performance of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, golden in warmth, pulsing with emotion.