RSNO, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Michael Tumelty
Four stars
FOR a bizarre reason, I had an instinct how Peter Oundjian was going to interpret Mahler’s colossal Second Symphony, The Resurrection, in the opening concert of the RSNO’s winter season on Saturday night. The RSNO had asked me to give a wee pre-concert talk on the piece in an upper-bar area of the Royal Concert Hall. So there I was, chuntering away about Mahler Two in an upstairs bar when all hell started breaking loose behind me. I realised my mellifluous gobbledegook was being accompanied by an invisible 100-strong symphony orchestra. The RSNO, still in rehearsal, was pelting out the third movement and the finale of the symphony while I was out front, talking to an audience that might have wondered if we were in a rehearsal, a performance, a seating call, or a zoo. “That’s too fast,” I shouted at my mob about Peter’s speed with his mob in the third movement Scherzo. It was so surreal I think I might have suggested to my audience we should chuck it, go to the pub and get someone to phone the final score through to me.
Anyway, we persisted and made it to the concert in one piece, to hear the RSNO’s well-played Mahler Two in Peter Oundjian’s relatively-classical, never-indulgent interpretation: there was no milking of Mahler Two in this intelligent account. Though extremely-expressive, it focused more on the vestigial traditional structure of the music, which was sustained unerringly throughout the piece, with crucial vocal strands from the gorgeous Sarah Connolly and Valentina Farcas, though there was a bit of a sonority and security issue with the RSNO Chorus.
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