Music

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

City Halls, Glasgow

Hazel Rowland

four stars

NONE of the pieces performed for this concert by the BBC SSO for Radio 3's Hear and Now strand were particularly long, but they certainly made up for it in intensity. The orchestra immediately dived into the high drama and tension of Ligeti’s San Francisco Polyphony, while their conductor Matthias Pintscher skilfully navigated between the work’s glimpses of melody and jabs of dissonance. The BBC SSO were highly responsive, allowing Pintscher to draw out an incredible amount of unease from something as simple as long-held notes on the strings.

Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth is similarly eager to coax as much drama as possible from her work Masaot/Clocks without Hands, which received its UK premier. The piece opens with the strings barely brushing their bows against their instruments, creating an eerie almost silence. Another interesting effect came through Neuwirth’s use of several of metronomes, whose ticking made one strangely conscience of time passing even when they were drowned out by the might of the full orchestra. The BBC SSO did not hold back during these monstrously loud passages, though I wish Neuwirth had, since the orchestra’s terrifying loudness had less of an impact the more one became used to this level of volume.

Hans Werner Henze’s Seventh Symphony reflects his pre-occupation with German symphonic style, but he also described it as his "own interpretation of our conflict-ridden time". It is his depiction of conflict that is most blatant. The unnerving first movement had the BBCSSO’s strings screaming accompanied by menacing percussion. Even if the reflective opening of the second movement in the cellos and harp offered some respite, this was a performance that was pained, drastic and sometimes terrifyingly horrific.