Music
BBC SSO
City Halls, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
five stars
AS birthday parties go, it was not a laugh a minute, but the SSO's 80th was celebrated with a wonderful programme, beautifully executed. The lighter moments came courtesy of soloist Francois Leleux, who was the apotheosis of French fluidity, articulacy and physical mobility on the platform for Mozart's Oboe Concerto, his cadenza towards the end of the Rondo finale utterly masterful. His encore with the orchestra of an arrangement of a song from The Magic Flute was the night's musical jest, since the concerto has only come down to us via a reworking for an instrument the young composer liked very much less.
The effortless transition the orchestra had made to a fizzing chamber band from the huge forces required for conductor Matthias Pintscher's opening Idyll, having its UK premiere, was what the evening was all about. With five busy percussionists as well as Julia Lynch inside her piano, a pair of harps and a contrabass clarinet, this is a huge piece with solo voices - flute, clarinet, oboe, horn, leader Laura Samuel and eventually Lynch at the keyboard emerging in turn from the dynamically complex topography of a very big score, often less idyllic than ominously threatening.
Pintscher's orchestration of his own work showed how well he knows his Mahler, and the performance of Das Lied von der Erde was one that will remain with me for ever. Tenor Andrew Staples has the powerful instrument required for his three songs, but the magnificence of contralto Anna Larsson, stepping in for an indisposed Sarah Connolly, was the highlight, her poise matched by the playing of the band, particularly in On Beauty and the half-hour epic closing Farewell, the SSO's principle oboe Stella McCracken her perfect foil.
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