BBC SSO/Carneiro, City Halls, Glasgow, Keith Bruce, five stars

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

five stars

BRACED inside and out by scaffolding for its overdue roof repairs, Glasgow’s City Halls welcomed an audience to hear its resident musicians for the first time in 560 days, as orchestra boss Dominic Parker precisely observed in his brief welcome to this season-opening concert, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Featuring two top drawer guests in Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro and Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto, the programme spanned 300 years of composition inside its first three minutes, moving from a Bach chorale arranged for brass quartet to Magnus Lindberg’s 21st century Chorale for orchestra based upon it, and concluded with a superb account of Jean Sibelius’s single-movement Symphony No.7 in C.

If the RSNO established its Sibelius credentials under Sir Alexander Gibson, the BBC Scottish ran off with the laurels for performances of the work of the Finn in the era of conductor Osmo Vanska, and his music is still in their blood. Under Carneiro, with whom the players have clearly established a mutually admiring partnership, the arc of the whole symphony was crystal clear and details sparkled, particularly the unison string ensemble around half-way through and the brass figure towards the end that echoed both the Bach and Lindberg of the first half of the concert.

Pekka Kuusito at Glasgow City Halls - credit BBC - Alan Peebles

On paper it may have appeared that it was Kuusisto’s show, with the second part more Carneiro’s, but the reality was much subtler. The symphony was preceded by Beethoven’s Leonora No.3 Overture, providing an alternative bridge between Bach and Sibelius, and featuring a very perky obligato from flautist Charlotte Ashton and a reminder that this is the Scotland’s best venue when offstage brass is a feature of the score.

All of this also spoke to the newest work of the evening, Lindberg’s Violin Concerto No.1 of 2006, most of which is a dialogue between soloist and the strings – initially a much more vexed conversation than it becomes – with punctuation from the reeds and horns. It has a big Sibelian moment from the latter late on, as the composer nods to his countryman, and Kuusisto was on predictably glorious form for the virtuosic cadenza.

As a statement of intent from an orchestra of enormous range, this was a perfectly constructed, and immaculately played, evening that spoke volumes about how much we have been missing since March of last year. The whole team is at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Sunday afternoon, when Kuusisto plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto rather than the Lindberg.