Music

BBC SSO/Wigglesworth City Halls,

Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

Prefacing Mahler’s epic, complex Fifth Symphony with the premiere of a big new piece for soprano and orchestra was a bold way to begin its new season, but the BBC Scottish and chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth were rewarded with a well-filled home venue and an attentive and appreciative audience.

The four-song cycle of Helen Grimes’s Folk, setting texts provided by Zoe Gilbert who wrote the book that inspired the work, was a demanding listen, but it had the best possible advocate in Claire Booth. Almost strutting on the spot, and alive to every syncopation of the beat, the singer dramatised Gilbert’s stories – recast in precisely-measured verse – in a mesmerising performance.

BBC SSO with composer Helen Grime, soprano Claire Booth, librettist Zoe Gilbert and conductor Ryan WigglesworthBBC SSO with composer Helen Grime, soprano Claire Booth, librettist Zoe Gilbert and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth (Image: Martin Shields) If there was a hint of funk in the opener, Prick Song, the sequence became much darker, and more erotic, to end with a confessional murder ballad. Booth’s musical articulation and diction were superb, and the SSO players gave her the best support in their performance. From the celesta to contrabassoon, with vibrant flashes of brass and percussion and ominous glissandi on the basses, the composer utilised the full palette of the orchestra in immense landscapes of sound.

That’s a description that might be applied to the Mahler as well, although what it is depicting remains a matter of conjecture. Wigglesworth seemed determined to give us a Mahler Five that was as close as possible to the composer’s stated wishes, with the correct pauses between the movements and significant segues. A deal of rehearsal time had been spent of the transitions, not just between, but within the sections, so there were fewer abrupt lurches in mood and pace than can sometimes be the case.

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If that meant the performance sometimes seemed a little deliberate, it was a price worth paying, although it was also towards the slower end of the spectrum, in the funereal opening movement as well as the aching fourth movement Adagietto. The symphony sees Mahler at his most expansive as well as mysteriously contained, and the huge forces on the platform in the relatively small City Hall played to the conductor’s approach.

As in the Grime, there was some fine solo playing – notably from trumpeter Mark O’Keeffe and guest first horn Ben Hulme – and the SSO strings were glorious in that well-loved slow movement. The success of Wigglesworth’s deliberation came in the Rondo-Finale and its building to successive peaks heralded by pealing bells in the brass, when the SSO still had plenty in reserve to make every note count.

Concert repeated at Aberdeen Music Hall tonight (Friday September 27)