RSNO
RSNO
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Keith Bruce
In what was a well-filled programme in front of a well-filled hall, Steven Osborne playing Ravel's Piano Concerto was always going to be a highlight. And if his eloquent and moving performance of the exquisite solo movement was everything one might have anticipated, it may nonetheless be his encore solo of Gershwin's I Loves You Porgy that remains among the top musical moments of the year for everyone who heard it.
The rest of the evening was all about an orchestra firing on all cylinders for music director Peter Oundjian. Perhaps, though, the conductor was overly concerned to hold something back for the climactic moments of Respighi's Pines of Rome as the augmented brass section and Mark Hindley's organ marched boldly up the Appian Way, with principle tuba John Whitener wielding the eye-catching contrabass trombone. It was a fitting climax of lavish orchestration, even if its substance cannot match the compositional skill of Maurice Ravel, himself no slouch in the scoring department of course.
The concert's first half had provided slightly earlier 20th century examples of colourful arranging of melodies out of the top drawer from very different hands.
Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings had a superb string quartet of the orchestra's principles, led by Maya Iwabuchi, at its heart, but the superb playing of the RSNO's strings perhaps lacked a little of the piece's required dynamic range. Stravinsky's Firebird Suite is also a string feast at the start, before the brass takes the spotlight. If it is unusual to hear it programmed before an interval, that maybe accounted for the fact that this gorgeous dance music seemed just a little restrained.
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