RSNO, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Michael Tumelty
five stars
SIR Roger Norrington is now an octogenarian. For as long as he elects to continue working, the RSNO should continue to invite him to direct concerts with the orchestra, as frequently and regularly as possible. As he demonstrated on Thursday night, he arrives with not a second-hand thought in his head, and not a single off-the-peg idea.
Everything is freshly-thought. Everything is challenged, and appropriate solutions found on every aspect of the performance. You don't need to agree (we're not all out of the same mould) but my God, does he remove the varnish from the classics, challenging orthodoxy and preconceptions.
On Thursday night, not a quiver of vibrato was heard from the RSNO strings. Everything was clean and dry in Haydn's 49th Symphony, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Mozart's K466 Piano Concerto, delivered by Lars Vogt as the most exquisite chamber music, with Norrington directing effortlessly from within the band, and the great pianist warming the hall with a Brahms encore.
Norrington pulled the RSNO in tight and compact around him, with, in the Haydn, the four basses operating antiphonally in pairs from opposite sides of the stage, while in the Mozart the woodwind played (standing) from behind the violins ("You're all soloists tonight," he told them. Then he changed the configuration again for the tremendous second half performance of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, with the basses now in a single line across the back of the band, with a wall-of sound impact: so logical, so effective, so rarely done here. Everything was newly-minted and stimulating. Norrington's a genius, and the RSNO played for him like a band re-born and sprinkled with stardust.
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