VoxCarnyx

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

The vicissitudes of Covid (specifically me catching it) meant taking the digital streaming route to the closing concert of the RSNO season, and that proved to have its compensations, if it was still a poor substitute for being present in the hall.

These revolved around the new work in the programme, Our Gilded Veins, Jay Capperauld’s concerto for the orchestra’s popular first flute, Katherine Bryan. Not only does the concert footage available online come with an introduction to the work by the composer, the performance is followed by reflections on it by the soloist – all very helpful with a brand new work.

Helpful, but not absolutely essential, because this is a very approachable piece that may well be the one to lift the young composer another few rungs up the ladder of international recognition. Only the very finest flautists will be technically equipped to play it, but all the best ones will surely want to add it to a concerto repertoire that is far from extensive.

Postponed because of the pandemic, Capperauld and Bryan have been working together on the piece for more than five years and that shows in the maturity of the writing for orchestra and soloist, and the way it is tailored to her voice. There is little that is fey and wistful in Bryan’s rich tone – she wants her instrument to be competing with the strings, brass and percussion for solo attention, and Our Gilded Veins is all about turning deficiencies and limitations into attributes.

The composer’s plan of the concerto may be that it journeys from sharp-edged fragments to ensemble unity – a percussive climax followed by a sequence of musical dawns on the lower register of the flute and then the whole orchestra – but Capperauld’s cacophony is still melodious and his resolutions far from placid, even a little bit funky.

While Our Gilded Veins is a terrific showpiece for the soloist, it is also a demanding work for the orchestra in its different rhythmic pulses and has some magnificent widescreen string and brass writing.

Once scheduled as a season-opener, the concerto came to rest in the season finale company of Beethoven’s Choral symphony, in which the RSNO Chorus were on especially strong form, most singing from memory, and the sopranos producing a united ensemble in those top notes from the start.

To my ears the four soloists – Eleanor Dennis, Stephanie Maitland, Benjamin Hulett and Bozidar Smiljanic – did not blend as well as one might like, but the bass-baritone began the Ode to Joy in superb robust style.

Conductor Thomas Sondergard had given an early indication of the crisp, sharp style of playing he wanted from the orchestra in the opening of Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture, which began the orchestra’s programme, and that was especially evident in the symphony’s epic Scherzo movement.

The concert was prefaced by the RSNO’s contribution to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in a solo performance of Diu Regnare (Long to reign), a pipe tune commissioned from Stuart Liddell for the occasion and played here by Finlay MacDonald. Apparently the short piece was played a remarkable 5000 times around the world last weekend.

Keith Bruce

Concert available online until June 30: rsno.org.uk

Picture: Katherine Bryan