Music

RCS Concerto Soloists/RSNO, RCS, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

Five stars

STRAIGHT in at the deep end here: what a brilliant, stimulating, entertaining and informative evening at the Royal Conservatoire on Wednesday, courtesy of RCS's top student-soloists, a small horde of student musicians playing side-by-side with RSNO professionals, conductor Jean-Claude Picard keeping them all more or less in order, loads of the players' peers out in noisy support, a good wee crowd from the general public swelling the ranks, and an infectious buzz in the house. A real out-of-the-norm shot in the arm.

In a sense there was nothing new in much of this. Every year, the RCS's leading performers, as part of their degree studies, undertake an assessed concerto performance with the RSNO. Until Wednesday, however, it was a behind-closed-doors experience. This year, for the first time, they opened it up to the public, and I trust the RSNO management will agree that it transformed an event into an occasion: nothing adds an edge or an atmosphere to musical performance like the presence of an audience; everyone ups their game.

The soloists were top-drawer and the repertoire fabulous, with Iranian-Scottish guitarist Sasha Savaloni, in a lucidly-detailed and duende-tinged performance of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, defining the RCS's Stevenson Hall as the ideal space for an intimate piece that is tricky to accommodate.

Then bassoonist Ryan Sullivan's athletic and soulful playing in Villa-Lobos' Ciranda das sete notas demonstrated 1000 things to do with a simple scale, while Lithuanian pianist Donata Waitkute, in an awesome display of power and musicianship, brought the house down with Ravel's Left-Hand Concerto, before Picard and the RSNO unleashed Bolero into the night. A great show: simple as that.