The RSNO moved out of their usual stamping grounds for the first in a four-concert tour of less-frequented venues, and attracted a good (but less than full) house for their trouble. The programme of well-established repertory works was conducted by the young Canadian, Peter Bergamin, with John Cushing, the orchestra's principal clarinetist, as the soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. He acquitted himself well in rising to the technical and expressive challenges of the work.
The famous slow movement was pleasingly expressive, and the odd hesitancy in articulation did not detract significantly from the overall effect of his performance, although it lacked the final conviction which comes with the repeated performances open to a specialist soloist. He will be better for getting this one under his belt, and the audience in Ayr on Thursday will be the likely beneficiaries, while those in Falkirk on Friday and Fort William on Saturday will hear Mozart's Horn Concerto No 3 instead, with David McClenaghan as soloist.
The orchestra sounded well throughout, beginning with a crisp, sharply-defined, account of Beethoven's Symphony No 5. The opening movement was emphatically con brio, but a shade more emphasis on the lyricism of the slow second movement might have brought out the contrast even more effectively. The brass section sounded less dominating in this setting, and the overall orchestral balance profited as a result. They closed with a taut but shapely reading of Elgar's Enigma Variations, marked by lovingly detailed playing and attentive characterisation of the shifting moods of its 14 variations.
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