Music

SCO/Manze

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

five stars

Conductor Andrew Manze is a well-kent figure on the podium at the City Hall, with both the BBC Scottish and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but there was a special sense of occasion for this concert, his first since he was named Principal Guest Conductor with the SCO as part of the orchestra’s new season announcement. In a memorable turn of phrase, he likened the post to being “a favourite uncle, without having to change the nappies.”

The joke landed well because of its contrast with the sophistication of the programme, which had the added attraction of local hero Steven Osborne as soloist. The master of 20th century piano repertoire was in his element with Ravel’s G Major concerto, a work of startling changes of gear. The complex first movement is full of teasing pathways not pursued, with an almost parodic decisive finish, while the finale is a virtuosic race to the tape. The slow movement, however, has a melody of aching loveliness performed here to plangent perfection by Osborne, with the crucial partnership of the SCO winds and especially the cor anglais of Katherine Bryar.

If there is a jazz influence to be found in a work – and the Ravel is full of it – Osborne is the player to inject just the right quotient of Art Tatum, and he topped that off with a very generous encore of Keith Jarrett.

Manze’s programme-opening selection of Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d’été also illustrated the Trans-Atlantic traffic of influences in that era, a beautiful work for strings and five wind players that was clearly heard by the movie soundtrack composers of early Hollywood – and has perhaps been pushed off the concert platform in recent years by their successors.

After the interval, Ravel’s earlier work, Pavane pour une infante défunte, was evidence that the composer’s gift for a tune was always there, and Manze brought the piece to a deliciously ambiguous hanging finish. His distinctive style found parallel, but very different, expression in the stately Minuet and Trio third movement of Haydn’s Symphony No 87, the last of his “Paris” symphonies, which was more transparently danceable than it is often performed.

The whole work was the clearest evidence of Manze being the ideal man for the SCO job – that being to get the very best out of musicians he has come to know well, and who clearly enjoy working with him.