SCO, City Hall, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
Four Stars
WHEN the SCO introduced the concept of an Associate Artist, I cynically thought it meant something nominal, not really suggestive of anything useful to the SCO or its audience in the long term.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Look at the relationships that have developed with Karen Cargill and Alexander Janiczek. And of particular interest is the closeness that has grown between the orchestra and conductor Richard Egarr. He is now in the bloodstream of the SCO. Audiences not only turn out for him: they have come to know him and his engaging ways. But more: they've come to trust him; they will turn out for him whatever he's doing, even if he's leading them into unfamiliar territory, as happened on Friday, when he chucked them in at the deep end of Weber's pretty-much unknown First Symphony. It's not a great piece: it's a try-out of a symphony, and Egarr didn't pretend otherwise. But he was prepared to give it an outing; and his audience, tellingly, was willing to come and listen. We probably won't hear it again: but they came, listened, and appreciated; and that's what I call audience intelligence, rewarded, at the end, with a blistering SCO account of Beethoven Eight.
Otherwise the night belonged to the SCO's super-eloquent principal horn player, Alec-Frank-Gemmill, who with his near-absolute mastery of the natural horn, a primal beast from before the installation of modern valve systems into the instrument, and something of a near-untameable creature of instability and unpredictability, produced spell-binding accounts of Mozart's Second Horn Concerto and, particularly, a recently-reconstructed version of a dazzlingly-acrobatic Concert Rondo in E flat: breath-taking stuff.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article