Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto must be seared deep into Nicola Benedetti's muscle memory by now – it's the piece that won her BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2004 and has been something of her signature piece ever since.
That level of familiarity makes for a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Benedetti is utterly at ease with the concerto's often strange twists and turns; she has mastered its quixotic nuances, flits breezily from its scented romanticism to its skittish virtuosity. She makes a consistently beautiful sound on her 1717 Stradivarius and takes evident care to listen carefully when sharing solos with orchestral members. On the other hand, she's capable of falling into routines. So ingrained are the junctions of this score that she occasionally rushed through them, and she explored fewer colours than in previous performances of the piece. Szymanowski's peculiar appeal depends on an exotic mystery which, in such practised hands, can begin to fade.
The rest of the programme was an equally mixed bag. The conductor was Andrew Litton, whose energy was brisk and jovial but who didn't tap into the BBC SSO's usual depths of texture and precision. Eternal Poems by Polish composer Mieczyslaw Karlowicz made a drag of an opener; the half-hour tone poem is unmemorable and overwrought, and Litton did little to bring the stock ecstasy and clumsy cliches to life. After the interval came Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, with too much sheen on the scherzo and an adagio hung up on detail (Litton subdivided the opening bars, beating nine instead of a slow three, and never regained the movement's menacing sweep). But there were some hearty orchestral tuttis and the bright, brash finale was a thrill.
HHH
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