SCO / Borrani
City Halls, Glasgow
So you think you know Beethoven 7? Think again, because the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s latest guest leader/director, Lorenza Borrani, can make you hear one of the most popular symphonies in the classical canon with fresh ears.
The over-cited opinion of Richard Wagner that it is “the apotheosis of the dance” – quoted in full in the concert programme – is nonsense word salad (in English anyway) when presented alongside a performance which made the point from the first chord, which sounded uncannily like a fiddle orchestra embarking on a set of reels. Borrani is the apotheosis of what a player/director should be, the eyes of all the musicians – and many in the audience for that matter – on the concertmaster and her eloquent bow.
For faithful SCO-followers – a growing band if this fine Glasgow concert attendance is any indication – Borrani was instantly recognisable as having been the guest leader for previous principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s memorable cycle of Schumann symphonies, recorded on the local Linn label. The pandemic postponed plans for her debut directing the orchestra, but it should be a regular feature of SCO seasons from now on. Borrani’s understanding of the significance of the space between the notes in Beethoven’s score, of the spicy rhythms of the music and the precision gradations of the dynamics were all served with ensemble precision that was at times quite startling.
Of course the SCO’s excellent winds brought their A-game to the performance, but it was the strings that really shone in Borrani’s reading, with a particular swinging, legato approach from the lower strings and especially the cellos, that was simultaneously quite different and clearly absolutely correct . The section’s four note phrase towards the end of the opening movement and the theme at the start of the Allegretto second movement set the pattern for an approach that was sustained throughout the work. The energy of the scherzo and syncopation of the finale occasioned wide smiles both on stage and in the auditorium.
This revelatory account of the Seventh Symphony was preceded by a first half similarly full of fascination. Borrani’s selection of seven pieces by colourful 20th century Venetian Bruno Maderna from his reworkings of the 1501 collection Odhecaton suggest that she is very much a fellow-traveller with SCO principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. As violinist Siun Milne put it in her amusing spoken introduction to the concert, the invention of the printing press meant this collection of early music “went viral” (in contemporary parlance) at the start of the 16th century. Maderna’s arrangements, while faithful to the originals, recasts them for modern instruments in what was plainly a fun exercise for composer and players alike.
It would be wrong to say the same thing of Gustav Mahler’s orchestral arrangement of Beethoven’s “Serioso” String Quartet for the Vienna Philharmonic, even if the composer’s purpose was similar. Whether Mahler’s treatment of the dense work enhances the quartet in any way is still debatable, even if David Matthew’s performing edition has rescued it from obscurity. The power and concentration of the piece survives, but the sharp edges are perhaps dulled.
What is beyond debate is that the resulting score sounds fiendishly difficult to play with the level of ensemble coherence Borrani and the SCO strings brought to the project. The slow movement, unsurprisingly, sounded the most Mahleresque, but the way the players rose to the challenge of the phrasing and rhythms of the faster music was more impressive.
Keith Bruce