Music

RSNO Hogmanay Concert

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Mary Brennan

four stars

HOGMANAY, and the RSNO has determined to see the old year out in a programme of perennial favourites. Overtures by Offenbach, Mozart and Johann Strauss II, arias by Rossini, Verdi and Bizet, with the closing section of traditional Scottish songs accompanied by a live piper. Nothing that we haven’t heard before, but it’s all delivered with such verve and lovingly attentive performances that you’re promptly reminded why you loved these familiar pieces in the first place.

There’s a lovely fizz and sparkle to the opening overture – Die Fledermous by Strauss – which then gives way to the limpid solemnities of Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. The shift from jaunty swaggering to elegiac elegance ushers in a running order that plays astutely with light and shade, loops into dance-y mode and has some very nifty juxtapositions in terms of style – showcasing the band as the class act we know it to be, while allowing conductor Michael Bawtree to act the lively Pied Piper on the podium.

He leads the RSNO swirling out of Tchaikovsky’s luscious Waltz from Swan Lake into the monumental grandeur of the Great Gate at Kiev, the brass section conjuring up triumphal glories of architecture that forever stayed a pipe dream. Ah, but then... we melted into Debussy’s Clair de Lune, the notes spiraling into the air like heady vestiges of night-scented stocks or reveries of balmy midnight assignations. Bliss, pure bliss.

What could follow that? Tenor Nicky Spence and baritone Richard Morrison, joining voices in the duet from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers and affirming the harmonious camraderie in Au fond du temple saint. Morrison would, subsequently, bound through the audience and onto the stage for a merrily playful Largo al Factotum, frisking through Rossini’s tongue-tripping aria with elan. Spence would be equally characterful when he assumed the confident chauvinism of Verdi’s La donna e mobile.

Great stuff, but this end-of-year hurrah! wouldn’t be over until the piper had played. Jonathan Graham, standing high on the balcony behind the RSNO, stirred hearts with the skirl of our heritage music – a perfect, evocative dram for the lugs. A guid new year to ane an' a' - and here’s to mony mair tours de force from the RSNO.