Music
RSNO, RSNO Centre, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
Five stars
OH my God, what an awesome night - and what a baptism for Glasgow’s latest concert venue, the new auditorium of the RSNO Centre, situated behind the familiar frontage of the Royal Concert Hall. It’s a 600-seater auditorium. It seems to be a flexible space: the walls move. Last Saturday, when I stuck my nose in, before giving a talk elsewhere in the building, the walls had come in to create a modest hospitality space for a reception. On Tuesday, for the first full orchestral concert in the new space, presented by Sandy Burnett, those walls had puffed up with pride to their full proportions, accommodating a full-scale symphony orchestra pouring out molten, emotional music by Tchaikovsky at white heat.
I can’t believe what’s going on here, so I’ll just say it: Glasgow has taken an exponential leap into the future, and, by the greatest luck, design, inspiration, calculation and alchemy, has come up with a new concert hall, lean, dry and clear, and of absolutely stonking immediacy.
And the quality of the RSNO sound, scorching off the players’ instruments, with the inspiration of music director Peter Oundjian, in white-hot extracts from Tchaikovsky, including the Nutcracker Suite and the Fourth Symphony, was incandescent in its temperature and impact. I thought the roof was coming off in the blazing finale of the Fourth Symphony. I cannot say this strongly-enough: the RSNO has a new administrative HQ that is a near miracle, equipped into the digital age beyond my powers of description. It has a blistering new concert hall that potentially batters through existing horizons. Scotland owns all of this. The potential is enormous. Much more to follow.
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