Music

SCO

City Hall, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

Four stars

THERE was drama at the SCO on Friday. Oboist Ramon Ortega Quero, who had played Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto on Thursday in Edinburgh in a concert otherwise devoted to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the “Romantic”, was taken ill. No details were given, but he had to withdraw and it meant a late change of programme for Glasgow. The box office was primed and chief executive Gavin Reid came on stage to inform the audience. It was simply too late to make alternative arrangements.

So, interestingly, we were left with a one-work programme and no interval. The one work was the Bruckner, which is massive and runs at 70 minutes. And we were all done before nine o’clock.

Bruckner was new territory for the SCO. The strings were bigged-up, with five double basses instead of two, and a platoon of heavy brass, with loads of natural and small-bore instruments brought in. The sound world Ticciati conjured from his troops was enthralling, with a lean, meaty feel to the music though the vastness of the canvas was securely captured. But the real advantages of Ticciati’s chamber orchestra version, to these ears, lay in the transparency of textures and the fresh clarity of the line. Above all, there was the sense of momentum that derived from these things. Not once did I think of an organ-like sound: Hallelujah. And not once did I feel I was witnessing the monumentally-slow building of a cathedral: Praise the Lord. And we could hear through the texture, into the grain and feel the inner parts in action: it was still big Bruckner, but Bruckner re-thought and grippingly-delivered by an unusually-muscular SCO.