Music

RSNO/Sondergard

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Keith Bruce

five stars

COMPOSER Matthew Rooke is not the first to find inspiration in the words of Caliban from The Tempest, “The isle is full of noises”, but his new piece of that title was the perfect preface to the RSNO’s beautifully-constructed season-opening programme under music director Thomas Sondergard.

From its scampering strings to the brass fanfare, this lockdown work is a finely-orchestrated miniature that wears its folk influence with a cinematic sweep, and set the tone for a concert that was all about the much-missed capabilities of a full symphony orchestra. Thereafter, we were on a singular version of the familiar concert model, but with only the following work, Shostakovich’s Festive Overture bearing the label of the format.

Beginning with the brass still to the fore, it is the composer at his most accessible, composed in 1954 to mark the 37th anniversary of Russia’s October Revolution, and taken up across the world, not least by the SNO under Alexander Gibson. Full of colour, the influence it had on composition in the UK for the new medium of television seemed especially obvious in this rendition.

Reduced to a Mozart-sized ensemble to accompany soloist Bruno Delepelaire, another side of the RSNO was showcased in Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, a tribute to the earlier composer. Delepelaire is principal cello with the Berlin Phil and, as you would expect, a player of relaxed refinement, who nonetheless produced a big warm sound from his instrument. The nod to earlier music was audible but the lush slower passages are like nothing Mozart ever wrote and the cadenzas still bear the fingerprints of Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who gave the first performance of the work and famously played fast and loose with the composer’s work.

Nonetheless, it is still clearly from the pen of the man who wrote Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, which made it ideal to pave the way for Stravinsky’s ballet score The Firebird after the interval.

The work that made Stravinsky’s name borrows from Debussy, Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov as well as Russian folk music, and is still one of the finest scores for a full orchestra in the canon 110 years on from its Paris premiere. Sondergard really has nailed the sometimes tricky acoustic of Glasgow’s big hall with his orchestra and there was a clarity in the playing here, across every section, that was at times quite startling. Individuals shone, notably leader Maya Iwabuchi and first flute Katherine Bryan, but this work presents opportunities for everyone on stage and there was a sense of purpose on display that proved Scotland’s national orchestra is indeed world class.