Music
BBC SSO
City Halls, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
four stars
IT is interesting to speculate just how differently the work's dedicatee, Benny Goodman, played the cadenza that comes towards the end of the first movement of Matthew Arnold's Second Clarinet Concerto when the piece was premiered in the mid-1970s. The association with Goodman (who had also given the US premiere of Arnold's First Clarinet Concerto) may not have been to the long term benefit of the piece's place in the repertoire, and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Annelien Van Wauwe's fresh, open approach certainly did it no harm here. The three movements are quite starkly delineated (and would each effectively stand alone), but share other elements beyond the solo clarinet, particularly a big role for tympani, even in the middle slow movement. Horn, flute and oboe figure prominently too, and the string squeals in the closing "Rag" movement are ingredients that take a finale that starts out in Dixieland a long way from most people's idea of ragtime.
Webern's Langsamer Satz is a lovely piece for string quartet but Gerard Schwarz's arrangement for string orchestra can sound a little soupy. Served as an hors d'oeuvre to Dvorak's Symphony No.8, with all of the SSO's string principals in their places, it was an opportunity for young conductor Alpesh Chauhan to enjoy one of the riches of this orchestra. He was at the top of his game directing the symphony; never flash in his audience-facing persona but athletically all over the orchestra from the podium, building the momentum of the work with fine dynamic control to a thrilling finish. As well as one of the composer's most beautiful melodies in the third movement allegretto, the Eighth has some of his most colourful orchestration, with the winds and low strings and finally brass all given glorious material.
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