Music
BBC SSO, City Hall, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
four stars
THOUGH as a broadcasting species, the BBC's Discovering Music is extinct, it is to the credit of the BBC SSO that they have hung on to it themselves, though only the second half, concert performance of the work under scrutiny gets broadcast.
And while many works have been subject to illustrated analysis in Disco Music, as it is known, yesterday afternoon's was a classic which brought a rare focus onto composer Hans Gal, who, though Viennese-born, ended up in Edinburgh in 1945, where he spent the rest of his life.
Yesterday, Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor, with soloist, cellist Raphael Wallfisch and the BBC SSO conducted by Grant Llewellyn, led the audience on a journey through the key points in Gal's life, and a well-navigated introduction to Gal's 1944 Cello Concerto, a work out of the Romantic tradition, but with its own accent.
Though the soloist has his moments of virtuosity to negotiate, essentially it's neither a display piece for the soloist, nor an area of combat between soloist and orchestra. If anything, the concerto is a collegiate piece, with a love affair going on between the composer and the principal oboe, sometimes in partnership with the cellist: principal Stella McCracken yesterday made a ravishing job of the most beautiful music in the concerto.
Not that the composer was stingy to the soloist, as Wallfisch demonstrated across the range of the cello, with its effective themes, rhythms and some acrobatics. It's a good piece, with a Brahmsian feel to its slow movement, and some original ideas in its first. The finale is more eclectic, and therefore less striking, but worth hearing.
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