SCO, City Hall, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty, Five Stars
ONCE in a very blue moon, along comes a concert I will never forget; an event so special, so unique, that I just know it’s in my mind, my heart, my spirit and, instantly, seared into the memory. On Friday the moon beamed an unforgettably-piercing blue for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a spectacular concert of music largely by Sibelius and Nielsen, for which, I’m almost embarrassed to report, there was a pitifully-small turnout.
There’s no point in being surprised: there was a new piece on the programme, there was Nielsen’s Violin Concerto, which has never exercised the same magnetism over audiences as Sibelius’s Concerto; and there was the UK premiere of The Maiden in the Tower, an orchestral suite drawn from Sibelius’ relatively-unknown one-act opera of the same name that, obviously, people can’t have heard before, which fact itself could be a deterrent, though they might resent me saying so: many music-lovers prefer the familiar. Perhaps it was unfortunate that the SCO put all of these jewels into one basket. The fact that conductor Tuomas Hannikainen is not known here and was making his debut might also be an element. Who knows?
Whatever, it was a supreme SCO concert, with Lotta Wennakoski’s Verdigris an effective starter ( I loved the Ravel swirls) Pekka Kuusisto’s Nielsen Violin Concerto the finest, most wonderfully-characterised account of the piece I ever expect to hear: what a masterpiece, with Kuusisto’s genius in full flight; while conductor Tuomas Hannikainen’s blindingly-informative arrangement of The Maiden in the Tower opened a new chapter for Sibelians. That’s what this business is all about: wake us up; all over again.
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