VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

This evening was already set to be the busiest of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s season when ill-health removed Sir Mark Elder from the podium on the final day of rehearsals. By sheer good fortune, the orchestra’s popular former associate principal conductor Martyn Brabbins was in Glasgow and able to take on the adventurous programme. I cannot recall hearing a last-minute substitute conductor winning such a warm reception from the audience.

That the concert, pairing Shostakovich’s two piano concertos with Debussy’s three orchestral Images, was such a spectacular success says much for Brabbins, but also for the SSO players and the two star soloists, Italian Federico Colli and trumpeter Matilda Lloyd, paired with the pianist for the unique vision that is the first of the those concertos to conclude the evening.

The conductor was immediately into the swing of things – from his hips specifically – for Debussy’s Iberia, actually the second of the published Images, although the first he wrote. From its opening rhythms, tambourine and castanets, to the Galician folk fiddle and reeds of the third movement, it’s as Spanish as anyone might want, with plenty for first trumpet Mark O’Keeffe to do as well. The most interesting playing of the composer’s hugely colourful scoring came in the fragrant middle section, with principle oboe Stella McCracken’s solo over lovely ensemble violas and cellos, and leader Kanako Ito’s unison line with guest first flute Tom Hancox.

Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 2 has one of those themes in the opening movement that many people know even if they could not identify its origin, but few will have heard it played in the highly percussive style Colli brought to it. His performance was completely captivating, through a more leisurely Romantic slow movement to the more familiarly frantic Shostakovich of the finale. It may be a fairly conventional work from the iconoclastic Russian, but Colli, who was very attentive to his fellow players on the platform and in close communication with the conductor, make it a very memorable one.

Debussy’s Images were not composed as a suite, and this programme’s deployment of them was very useful, numbers 1 and 3 opening the second half. They are perhaps more obviously the Debussy of L’apres-midi d’un faune or Jeux. The first of them, Gigues, uses a tune, The Keel Row, that has its origin in North-East England, even if that’s not where the composer heard it. Again requiring a large orchestra, the concluding Rondes de Printemps was a real showcase for the 20 players in the wind section.

Shostakovich’s Concerto No 1, composed over twenty years before No 2, is a remarkable work, subtitled “for piano, trumpet and strings” and no less colourful for being compact. Brabbins kept the energy level high in brisk transitions through the four movements, although the pace slackens for the muted trumpet solo in the slower middle section before the work becomes a Keystone Cops chase to the end, famously inspired by the composer’s side-hustle as a silent movie accompanist as a student. Colli and Lloyd made an ideal partnership for the job.

With performance and live Radio 3 broadcast salvaged in style, the casualty of Sir Mark Elder’s indisposition was the projected recording of the Stravinsky concertos for Chandos this weekend. That postponement could have an economic impact somewhere down the line, as it may well have been underwriting the substantial forces required for the Debussy.

This concert is available to listen to on BBC Sounds for 30 days.

Keith Bruce