Music

RSNO/Chang

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Keith Bruce

four stars

OF the three works in Saturday evening’s programme, South Korean conductor Han-Na Chang directed the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in two of them entirely from memory. The exception was Elgar’s Cello Concerto, for which the soloist was Frenchman Bruno Delepelaire.

This might be thought odd, as Chang has forged her career on the podium on the back of her success as a virtuoso cellist herself, but perhaps that was an eloquent illustration of exactly how different are the jobs of knowing the full score and interpreting the lead line.

The pairing of Chang and Delepelaire certainly offered fresh thinking throughout the programme, which began with a focus on the orchestral cellos, beginning with guest section leader Benjamin Hugues. Rossini’s Overture to the opera William Tell may be known by all for the brass-led gallop at the end, but it begins in an entirely different way, setting the pastoral scene of the story.

Chang’s style here - meticulous focus on details, quiet playing and a bold determination on deliberate pacing - set the template for the entire programme, so that the excitement of the Lone Ranger’s tune, when it arrived, was almost a distraction.

The Elgar Concerto, not unlike the Bruch Violin Concerto, is one of those works concertgoers must sometimes think they never need hear again, until someone performs it in a startlingly new way. That was the case here, Delepelaire and the conductor finding a depth of emotion in the work that eschewed any histrionics on the part of the soloist but gave him the perfect orchestral platform, acknowledging that sometimes, as in the slow third movement, the role of the ensemble is very much smaller.

Delepelaire plays a 300-year-old Venetian instrument with a very sonorous mellow tone, and making the most of that asset was very audibly part of the equation as well.

All of which set up Chang’s radical way with one of the pivotal works of the orchestral canon, Beethoven’s Symphony No 3, in a way that could only seem obvious with hindsight. This was an Eroica like no other, employing a light chamber orchestra touch with the lessons of historically-informed practice, but entirely without the brisk tempi usually associated with that approach. The second movement Marcia funebre was not so much relentless as constantly evolving, Chang had a featherlight touch with the Scherzo, and the Finale became not so much “Poco andante” as breath-catchingly slow before its last bars.

This was a reading of the symphony that some might have found challenging, but it was beyond argument refreshing and thought-provoking.