Music
RSNO
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Keith Bruce
four stars
PERHAPS we need look for no other link in the ear-catching programmes that Principal Guest Conductor Thomas Sondergard is directing with RSNO than that Sibelius, Mahler, and Beethoven are, as he says “musical giants close to my heart”. A comparatively short concert, Saturday’s packed in a lot of music, with five songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with baritone Roderick Williams at its heart. This is a very different Mahler from the symphonist, where he re-purposed some of the melodies, and perfect for Williams, who is as expressive and fun with the animal cast of In Praise of Lofty Intellect and then lyrical and Romantic for Where The Fair Trumpets Sound.
The detail in the orchestration ¬– like the pizzicato string accent to the tune in the winds at the start of St Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fish – is one connection with Jean Sibelius, whose Finlandia began the evening with beautifully poised work from the RSNO brass. After the interval, The Oceanides, from the eve of the First World War, allows the same section the last word, but is most distinctive in the startling writing for the strings, guest-led here by young American violinist Emma Steele, who is a concert master at the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen. With its brace of tympanists, these are seas unlike those of Debussy or Britten, but as magisterial as either.
Beethoven’s first symphonic statement, from over a century earlier, can still sound like a fresh radical voice. Sondergard took a flowing line through those remarkable opening bars, and the full sound from a reduced-size band was matched with crisp precision in the third movement and the theatrical Finale.
More in the series, with soprano Jennifer Johnston, at the end of May.
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