Music
RSNO
RSNO Centre, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Keith Bruce, Four stars
THE city of Glasgow has a new instrumental anthem in composer Oliver Searle’s Sauchiehall, which had its live premiere in Wednesday’s lunchtime concert under the baton of Polish conductor Patrycja Pieczara.
Although it made its digital debut two years ago via the RSNO 360 app for your phone or tablet computer, to mark the orchestra’s move from one end of Glasgow’s most internationally-renowned thoroughfare to the other, it has taken until now for the piece to worm its way into a programme. The RSNO management would be wise to schedule another performance soon, because it sounds like a popular hit to me. With nods to various chapters in the 125-year history of the orchestra, including being the pit band for Scottish Opera, and having Aaron Copland as a guest conductor and Gustav Holst in the brass section, the piece also tries to reflect the varied sonic delights to be heard on Sauchiehall Street, with dance halls, rock venues and traditional music overlapping in its eight minutes. Pieczara gave it hip-swinging direction just to emphasise the point.
It was preceded by the unmistakably 20th century American sound of Samuel Barber’s Second Essay for Orchestra which had a similarly arresting climax, and just as ear-catching a start with trio of bass drum, tuba and flute. It is a piece that would sit very comfortably alongside the music from Star Wars that the orchestra will play on Saturday.
Whether as a deliberate attempt to complement the rest of the programme or for other reasons, Pieczara gave us some very sassy Mendelssohn to follow. This reading of his “Italian” Symphony No4 was rather less of a change of gear than one might have expected. It was an approach that worked well on the outer movements but was less successful on the slower two in the middle when the dynamic variations required of the strings were less pronounced than they should be. The duetting winds that are a feature of the whole piece, however, sounded superb in the lively acoustic of the new(ish) auditorium.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here