Music Review

City Halls, Glasgow

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LET'S give it to the players at Thursday night's BBC SSO concert in which the orchestra was conducted by Andrew Manze. Michael Tippett's Divertimento on Sellinger's Round, a weird and occasionally wacky set of variations on a keyboard piece by William Byrd, is not often played. But the SSO version on Thursday, with the BBC strings in top-drawer mode, cut to the heart of the piece in its character, especially in its daft, cartoon music, revealing brilliant entertainment across the orchestral board.

And I found the BBC statement that Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, K466, is his "darkest concerto" extraordinary. No it's not, as was exemplified throughout the brilliant, light performance by Israeli pianist Shai Wosner. Sure, there is a fantastic intrigue in the shady intro and theme to the first movement, but it is countered by the simplicity of the beautiful slow movement, and totally seen off in the repeatedly mischievous coda of the finale, all stunningly depicted by the weightless playing of Wosner.

And whatever one thinks of Vaughan Williams's Seventh Symphony, the Sinfonia Antarctica, there is no arguing that the SSO's spacious, glacial and enormous account of the work, with the contributions from Michael Bawtree's Glasgow Chamber Choir (ladies section), soprano Katherine Broderick and the massive BBC SSO forces did anything other than hit the mark in this acutely imagined evocation of Scott's disastrous attempt to reach the South Pole. The playing was profoundly atmospheric and magically illustrative. With Vaughan Williams's Fifth on Saturday (RSNO) and the Eighth yesterday (SSO again) it is almost time to say something about this composer.

MICHAEL TUMELTY

Stereophonics

The Hydro, Glasgow

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FOR those of us of a certain age, there are two bands called Stereophonics. The first, a group of bright young things we remember from our teens, whose carefully-crafted songs combined hummable melodies with the sort of brilliant social commentary that set them apart from their many guitar-wielding peers. The second released some albums full of the same sneering psychedelia, more posture than performance, that characterised the descent into oblivion of Oasis - and yet, somehow, still ended up headlining festivals. Which shows how much I know.

It's the second of these bands that opens the show with Catacomb, a chugging, riff-heavy track from new album Graffiti On A Train. As opening statements go it's certainly loud, although perhaps better suited to showing off The Hydro's capabilities in the lighting and sound departments than the musical prowess of the Welsh four-piece. But then the house lights change, and suddenly we're all singing 1997's Local Boy In The Photograph" as if- in a less haunting way than the lyrics to the song - we too will "always be 23".

The new album's title track hints at yet another reinvention, casting songwriter and frontman Kelly Jones back in the role of storyteller - albeit with an extra couple of decades' world-weariness in his already raspy voice. Adam Zindani's magnificent guitar solo also deserves a mention, although the projected train tracks on gauzy cloth draped in front of the stage take the imagery a bit too far. Yet it's more subtle than the heavy-handed music video for In A Moment, which as the only thing to show on the venue's large screens apart from stylised images of the band was a bizarre distraction.

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Pere Ubu

The Liquid Room, Edinburgh

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"ANYONE expecting the hits," drawls David Thomas, de facto leader of the Cleveland, Ohio sired "avant-garage" band for almost 40 years, "come talk to me. They're in my head, but I won't answer." A mere six months after touring their fifteenth original studio album, Lady From Shanghai, Thomas and Co have ripped up the rule-book (and there is a 100-page "manual" to accompany the album) and opted to showcase material from two work-on-progress song cycles, Visions Of The Moon and Dr Faustroll In The Big Easy. Like the man says, "If something works, why do it again?"

It's a belligerently conceptual approach, but this is how Thomas, sat in a bucket chair and fuelled by Diet Pepsi and Red Bull as he reads lyrics from a music stand, rolls. In baggy-pants and braces, Thomas looks somewhere between a porch-dwelling blues hollerer and Tennessee Williams's Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Guitarist Keith Moline, drummer Steve Mehlman, electronics wizard Gagaran, aka Graham "Dids" Dowdall and latest addition to the Ubu stew, clarinetist Daryll Boon filling in the gaps which absent bassist Michele Temple and vintage synth player Robert Wheeler normally occupy, happily go along with Thomas's benign dictatorship, even as it's overseen with a wry grin.

The new songs themselves are eerie, slow-burning constructions, high on B-movie atmospherics and punctuated by occasional wig-outs. When he's not veering off into rambling anecdotes, Thomas is as much passive conductor as singer, his dark mutterings giving way to anguished high-pitched howls. This is a spacier Pere Ubu, more resembling an atonal chamber ensemble than a rock band, wilfully obtuse and demanding maximum concentration.

Neil Cooper

Rsno Naked Classics

Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

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IF ever I was to be converted to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, it would probably have happened on Saturday night at the RSNO's Naked Classics exploration of Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony. Presenter Paul Rissmann was at strength here through his setting of the historical context of the 1943 piece, and riveting in his analysis of the composer's orchestration, thematic construction and development of his materials. Many secrets were revealed about the inner workings of the music, and about how one thing flows into another and leads to yet another.

And Rissmann's argument that Elgar's music is something essentially Germanic, while it was Vaughan Williams in fact who ploughed the furrow in search of a uniquely British/English idiom that would be effective in symphonic music, was wonderfully provocative.

This was a Naked Classics with a purpose, and everybody piled in: Rissmann, of course, relentless in his passionate advocacy, RSNO leader Jim Clark, who has old VW at the top of the British pile, conductor Rumon Gamba who takes the music wherever he can on his travels, and the RSNO itself, faultlessly characterful in its illustration of all the elements of the Symphony, then gloriously atmospheric in its evocative, unbroken performance of the whole piece. Naked Classics is never better than when it has a point to make, whether it's championship, missionary work, or genuine investigation. Here, those elements of this invaluable series came in a bundle, and with a common purpose.

I remain at best a VW agnostic, but that's my problem; and if Saturday's argument from this outfit didn't persuade me, I guess I'm just stuck with it.

Michael TumelTy

Edinburgh Royal Choral Union

Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh

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In a gushing pre-concert talk Paul Mealor praised the ERCU for its efforts in tackling his "mad" recent Jam commission The Farthest Shore - here receiving its Scottish premiere. Well it's all relative I suppose but "mad" is not be the word I would use.

Wrapping the choir round the audience may seem a bold move, but such staging has become all but standard in contemporary large ensemble productions, and the gimmick of having the performers immerse us in sea/storm sound effects is also nothing new. So what of the actual music? Sad to say it was disappointingly formulaic, viz: establish static drone/pad; overlay with pre-digested solo melody; add rest of choir; mix in brass/bring to dynamic climax; repeat until you've run out of words.

Proper, clinical insanity came after the interval in the form of Britten's Rejoice In The Lamb - an affectedly eccentric work whose text was composed by 18th-century poet Christopher Smart during his confinement in a lunatic asylum. Clearly, this piece has become something of a staple in the repertoire, but its appeal continues to elude me, and the ERCU's performance did not have sufficient precision or energy to persuade me otherwise.

They seemed more confident in their rendition of Faure's Requiem, which brought the concert to a reassuring close. Here, chivvied on under the tireless direction of conductor Michael Bawtree, it genuinely captured the work's stirring romanticism, and featured soloists Jeremy Huw Williams (baritone) and Emily Mitchell (soprano) were finally able to shine, particularly the latter in her moving account of the iconic Pie Jesu setting.

Martin Kershaw