SCO, City Hall, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
four stars
ONE way or another, there was some healthy championship going on at the SCO's splendid concert on Friday night in Glasgow, where the orchestra was directed by Nicholas Collon, a dynamic conductor who, I feel sure, will be back before too long.
I'm not a man to go off obsessively in search of themes, but, allied to the notion of championship, they were there to be seen in Friday's concert. I was around in 1967 when Mahler's music, thanks to the fanatical championship of Leonard Bernstein, went global and into cult status and the mainstream repertoire.
Twenty-six years before that, however, Benjamin Britten wrote his arrangement of the second movement of Mahler's Third Symphony specifically to bring the music to public attention. The sheer beauty of that arrangement was captured and reflected in the SCO's sumptuous performance on Friday.
And, though the world is full of apologists for Brahms' early First Serenade, the six-movement piece is just too long. It needs help. And it got it on Friday from Collon and the SCO, with a swiftness and conciseness that gave the Serenade a momentum and integrity I have not heard. A relief and a refreshment.
Finally, the championship theme of the evening was explicit with the SCO's first performance of Candlebird, by the orchestra's Associate Composer, Martin Suckling. Candlebird, a set of five songs to texts by Don Paterson, which were commandingly-delivered, in speech and song, by baritone Mark Stone, spoke of love and nature and were gleamingly-crafted by this gifted young composer, draped and coloured with Suckling's characteristically needle-sharp, exquisite palette of orchestration that set the music alight. A mesmerising piece.
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