Music
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow
Hazel Rowland
three stars
IT IS difficult to see how Beethoven’s 1808 Academy Concert could be anything but a success. For Beethoven premiered both his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, as well as giving the first Vienna performance of his Fourth Piano Concerto.
Yet the reception was mixed to say the least. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy (Op. 80) had been written at the last minute, so the orchestra were under-rehearsed. The original soprano for the aria Ah! Perfido refused to perform after quarrelling with composer, forcing him to use an inexperienced replacement. To top it all, the audience had to endure a very cold concert hall for its lengthy duration.
Though Glasgow City Halls has no such heating problems, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s opening with Beethoven Sixth Symphony "Pastoral" did not exactly whet the appetite for the next four and a half hours of Beethoven. In the first and second movements, the strings had difficulty singing Beethoven’s tranquil melodies sweetly enough and conductor Thomas Dausgaard was unable to draw from the orchestra the rough and tumble necessary for the third movement’s peasant dance. Soprano Malin Christensson’s expressive singing woke the orchestra up somewhat with "Ah! Perfido", yet she had problems with projection, lacking the power for the aria’s melodramatic anger.
Clara Mouriz’s rich alto voice and the ability of Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's singers to be both gloriously loud and lyrical in Beethoven’s Mass in C should be noted. But the young pianist, Jan Lisiecki, was the concert’s real star. Throughout Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concert his playing was pristine, while always radiating warmth. In the Piano Fantasia, he expertly switched between virtuosity and passages of inward reflection, revealing a maturity way beyond his years.
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