Music

BBC SSO

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

IT is partly a consequence of the BBC Scottish being a broadcasting orchestra that it has taken over a year and a half for Sir James MacMillan's Symphony No.4 to be heard at its City Hall home. Commissioned by the BBC, when it was premiered at the Proms in 2015 – with Donald Runnicles conducting – it was heard live on the radio and screened on BBC Four three days later, which is as much exposure as a new work can expect, so other contributions to the network were bound to take precedence for a while thereafter. This time the composer himself was on the podium.

MacMillan's newest symphony is a work that deserves to be heard more often. What was crystal clear on this hearing is how exquisitely structured a piece it is, with lovely moments for brass, winds and percussion, and a wealth of riches for the lower strings. Often it is the transition from one tranche of material to the next that makes you catch your breath. At what seem precisely timed intervals, principal viola Scott Dickinson was in the spotlight, with some virtuoso fast fingering, but it is what happens as his solos end in the inspired orchestration that conveys as much emotion.

The concert opened with John Maxwell Geddes's Voyager – an astronomy-inspired sparkle of pizzicato strings that dates from 1985 but is not showing its years at all – and also featured the return of BBC New Generation Artist Annelien Van Wauwe with another British clarinet concerto. More suited to her style than the jazz-influenced Walton last month, the finale of the Finzi conjured images of Ian Carmichael at the wheel of a blower Bentley, bowling through the Cotswolds.