Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Saturday 24 October
Miranda Heggie, Four stars
With a focus on music written for piano, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra gave an evocative performance of most celebrated orchestral works, Pictures at an Exhibition, originally scored for solo piano by Mussorgsky and ingeniously transcribed for full orchestra by Ravel. This suite of musical ‘pictures’ based on painting’s by the composer’s friend the artist Victor Hartman was given a wash of vibrant colours by the orchestra under the direction of principal guest conductor Thomas Søndergård. With clear, ringing brass in the opening promenade, the audience was at once swept up on Mussorgsky’s visual journey. The sultry saxophone solo wonderfully evoked the moonlit scene of ‘the old castle’, and Søndergård’s sensitive, almost stealthy conducting teased out the mysterious nature of Catacombs, before ending with a triumphant and resplendent Great Gate of Kiev, with dazzling percussion.
Croatian pianist Dejan Lazi? opened the programme with the first movement from his own Piano Concerto in Istrian Style. Inspired by the folklore and traditional musical of his native Istria, a peninsula in northwest Croatia which juts into the Adriatic Sea, as well composers who have influenced him such as Brahms and Beethoven, Lazi?’s spirited score is a tremendous fusion of Croatian folk and western classical musical traditions.
Lazi?’s skills as a soloist were further displayed in his flamboyant performance of Chopin’s second piano concerto, as he moves through Chopin’s intricately fluid passages with feathery lightness. Injecting a real sense of fun into the final movement, Lazi? clearly relishes Chopin’s nods to his own native folk music, as he drew out the light, sprightly rhythms common to the traditional Polish Mazurka.
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