Music

RSNO/Sondergard

Jackson Hall, UC Davis, Sacramento

Keith Bruce

*****

WHEN the RSNO played the programme it was taking on tour in Glasgow a fortnight previously, I suggested that it was the Seventh Symphony of Sibelius that best represented the heritage and strength of our national orchestra. Half a dozen performances across Arizona and California later, it is clear that the opening work of the concert represented only one facet of the current outfit’s rich musicality, with the other works it has played on tour, Prokofiev’s Symphony Number 5 and Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, just as rewarding to hear multiple times.

The final two concerts, in the Granada Theatre in downtown Santa Barbara and then in the superb campus concert hall of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts near Sacramento, were both sell-outs and greeted by standing ovations, and rewarded by a full complement of encores.

The quality of the venue made Saturday night’s concert the perfect conclusion to the tour, and it was certainly an event that the orchestra’s departing communications manager, the very popular Daniel Pollitt, will be happy to recall as his last one in post.

After a blistering account of the Rachmaninov, rather faster in places than earlier performances, soloist Olga Kern revealed two more of her seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of encore pieces, Anatoly Liadov’s playful Musical Box and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee played at warp speed.

Both the Sibelius and the Prokofiev begin with a focus on the lower strings of the orchestra, and to hear the works repeated over several evenings was to appreciate the beautiful ensemble coherence of each section. The strings of the RSNO are currently world class, beyond argument, and both of these works are superb showcases for that strength, as well as for the fine individual wind soloists.

Have the brass and horns of the orchestra ever been as carefully calibrated as they are at present? And the percussion as nuanced and precise? There is no weak link anywhere in this band of musicians, and the relationship with musical director and conductor Thomas Sondergard is one of mutual appreciation and respect.

With the kitsch Scotch snaps of Matthew Arnold’s Scottish Dance No1 and the perennial Eightsome Reels performed with ebullience and passion as the orchestral encores, the RSNO was a truly magnificent ambassador for its homeland.