Music

BBC SSO/Liebreich

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

THE opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No 4 may not be as recognisable as the first bars of his Fifth, but it is arresting nonetheless, a slow, ominous unfolding of the music before the delayed gratification of a glorious melody exchanged between clarinet and the SSO strings. They were in very fine fettle, regardless of the number of deputising musicians in key positions. The radical Beethoven re-surfaces in the third movement, its rhythmic boldness a step on from the music of his predecessors, but German conductor Alexander Liebreich, recently appointed artistic director of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra making his debut with this orchestra, kept the phrasing as crisp in the slow second movement as he did on the quicker music. The Fourth may not be as revolutionary as the symphonies on either side of it, but it does lay out clearly the development of symphonic form that Beethoven undertook, and that was audible in every note of this performance.

The music from living Japanese composers that had preceded it in the first half was also radical, particularly the Third Piano Concerto by Dai Fujikura, entitled “Impulse”, with Yu Kosuge as soloist. The composer, who was present to hear the performance, promised “a long lasting orgasmic sound gushing into your ears” in his programme note, but whether it seemed sexy or relentless is perhaps a matter of taste. It was certainly a compelling listen in Yu Kosuge’s virtuoso performance, another SSO debut.

For the first five minutes or so she was working entirely at the top octaves of the keyboard, and the Steinway’s highest note took a real hammering later on too, with the work concerned to explore the full parameters of the piano. There was powerful stuff from the orchestra too, from tuned percussion and piccolo to a very distinctive recurring descending string figure.

Toshio Hosokawa’s Meditation to the victims of Tsunami, from 2011, which opened the concert, was both more conventional and more identifiably Eastern in its soundworld. Ominous bass drum and contra-bassoon gave way to extravagant string flourishes and brass blasts, as well as lovely alto flute passage played by Luke Russell.