Music

SCO/Storgards

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

Four stars

 

The marketing of this concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra occasioned a little jousting on social media between a former Herald colleague and a more recent acquaintance in music criticism, the question being whether Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony or the UK premiere of a new Viola Concerto by Canadian composer Cassandra Miller was the more significant event, and/or selling point.

It is not to avoid taking sides to observe that both of them turned out to be correct. This Tchaikovsky 5 sounded box fresh itself, and not solely because the composer’s work is repertoire the SCO rarely visited until recently. Much of that was down to Finnish conductor John Storgards, recently astutely signed as Chief Conductor by the BBC Philharmonic, and a man who draws intelligent and committed performances from every outfit he directs. He chose to use an arrangement of the symphony by Sheffield-based George Morton, whose clever reduction of the score was revelatory from the very deliberate statement of the “fate” motif by first clarinet Maximiliano Martin in the opening bars.

Some way distant from how we expect to hear the work, the balance between single winds (bassoon, flute and eventually horn especially) and the 30 strings was always effective, faithful to the composer’s orchestration but in a leaner form. The rhythmic interplay between the string sections was more noticeable and Storgards brought very particular phrasing to the third movement waltz.

Cassandra Miller’s “I cannot love without trembling” (a seductive title which resists concise explanation, if her own programme note is to be trusted) is as remarkable a sonic experience, but in a very different way. Written for virtuoso violist Lawrence Power, who was the soloist, it asks a huge amount of player and instrument - the complexity of the work’s inspiration reflected in the playing techniques it demands, harmonics and precision glissando featuring from the start. The music for strings and winds is characterised by long, sustained notes but with an ever-present pulse, and Storgards consistently emphasised stresses in the underscore.

Later there are dramatic entries by trumpets and horns before a piercing piccolo introduces an extended cadenza with tuned percussion and strummed violins. A truly remarkable and original work, if one that only the boldest of viola players will approach.

The concert had begun on the conductor’s home turf with Sibelius, and his late Tempest Suite No 2, made from the incidental music for a production of the Shakespeare play for an orchestra of SCO proportions. With a triple time dance after the initial scene-setting by strings and harp and before the weightier “Prospero” theme, the orchestration then develops in symphonic fashion. The piece had obviously been carefully selected to pre-figure the music that followed.

The concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for broadcast on the evening of Wednesday, May 10.