Music

BBC SSO

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce, four stars

AUDIENCES in Germany, Italy and Austria have a treat in store when chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard arrives next week on his debut tour with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – but they will not hear Russian soloist Alexandra Soumm, as Nikolaj Znaider is the violinist playing the Brahms concerto in Europe. Soumm is a former BBC New Generation artist who has also appeared with the RSNO and Alexander Lazarev in Scotland, and has performances with Leonard Slatkin and Marin Alsop on her resume. If she is still feeling her way into one of the most demanding pieces in the standard repertoire, it is with an assurance that manages the transitions from the fiery double stopping and lightning-fingered passages to the gentler melodies in winning style, even when she sometimes seemed in a little too much of a hurry.

Such transitions are key to the programme the orchestra is taking on tour. Dausgaard has found parallels beyond evocations of the maritime landscape between Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, which broke new ground in performance style in the spring of 1842 by insisting on only the briefest of pauses between movements. With 50 string players on stage and just the basic complement of winds, the latter still make their presence felt in the symphony while the ensemble sound is very rich indeed, although the Danish conductor still demands clarity and crispness. His phrasing of the second theme of the first movement was notably individual and recalled his fresh approach to the opening bars of Moonlight in the Britten – this was a very ominous moon before a rather terrifying concluding Storm.

Harpist Helen Thomson put in a distinguished performance in that piece, and Stella McCracken’s beautiful playing of the oboe solo leading the ten-piece wind band that opens the slow movement of the Brahms also deserves special mention. Roll on next Sunday morning in Vienna’s Musikverein.