They may have filled the auditorium - built six years ago as an opera house for the Aix festival, with screens and overhead panels converting it into a very fine concert hall - but many of the French music fans are not in the best of health.
So the problem during the dynamic contrasts of Olivier Messiaen's Les offrandes oubliees is not that Scotland's national orchestra has boldly elected to open with an offering of coals to Newcastle, but that the consumptives in the crowd are a little disruptive. That the band kept its shape, to use a sporting analogy, was a notable triumph.
Thereafter the coughing subsided and the concert's trajectory was ever upwards. I was unsure of some of the pacing of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto - more down to pianist Nikolai Lugansky than conductor Peter Oundjian - but there was no doubting the quality of the soloist's playing, the beauty of the orchestra's accompaniment on the Adagio second movement, or the elegant structure of the finale.
It was the orchestra's performance of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances after the interval, however, that really ignited French passions. The rich melodic writing is married to wonderful orchestration that gives a big band a wonderful showcase, and the RSNO rose to the occasion, with the winds in particular taking the opportunity to shine.
Leader Maya Iwabuchi's own lovely solo passage put the gloss on some muscular string playing and the rhythmic coherence across all the sections in the build-up to the conclusion was absolutely world class. With a further Hungarian Dance from Brahms and the tour favourite of Eightsome Reels as encores, the French audience were not only impressed, but possibly even restored.
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