WHO on earth was responsible for dreaming up the dazzlingly ambitious concert dished out by the BBC SSO and Ilan Volkov yesterday afternoon?
One thing's for sure: only the BBC could have pulled off such an audacious project and drawn a healthy crowd to boot.
The programme featured exclusively the music of Stravinsky: six works in all, spanning almost the composer's entire career from before the beginning to the late 1950s and one of the most advanced pieces he wrote in terms of its musical language. Moreover, the afternoon feast was garlanded with a triple helping of Steven Osborne at his wittiest, steeliest and punchiest, all facets deployed with his inimitable power and clarity.
Each half of the extraordinary event was buttressed by a piece of musical gigantism from Russia's wee giant. It exploded with 60 seconds of thunder from wind, brass and percussion in The Song of the Volga Boatmen; then – after the interval – Volkov and band rollicked through Stravinsky's orchestration of Chopin's Grand Valse Brillante, written in 1909, the year before the composer's big breakthrough with The Firebird.
The strings gave a crisply stylish account of the Concerto in D, and otherwise it was Steven Osborne's afternoon. The pianist was in awesome form, and the SSO with Volkov in powerful alliance as Linlithgow's finest pelted joyfully through the Capriccio with its wonderful baroque second movement, the pointillistic Movements for piano and orchestra not remotely scary in the assured hands of Volkov and Osborne. The party was rounded off with a blindingly bouncy account of the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments: a storming close to a stunning afternoon.
HHHH
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article