VoxCarnyx

Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk

While some festivals around the UK have modelled themselves on the Aldeburgh Festival – marriages of off-the-beaten-track location, top-level programming and the kudos of having a major composer as its central icon – none can quite match the idyllic campus-style infrastructure of this 75-year-old Suffolk event, founded by the late Benjamin Britten and now part of a wider musical initiative – performance, coaching and research – that extends throughout the year. 

Last week the 800-seater concert hall at the heart of the swiftly remodelled Snape Maltings complex played host to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, signing off for its summer holidays with two magnificent programmes under chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. 

Getting there wasn’t all plain sailing. A cancelled Avanti Glasgow-to-London train left a majorly extended orchestra jostling for seats on a later service, consequently missing their planned Ipswich connection and having to purchase new tickets as a result. Not that it showed the following evening in a challenging opening programme of music by Judith Weir, Britten and Mahler.

Not even in the second half, when the alarming announcement was made that second oboist Mary James had suffered a serious accident – catching her fingers in a heavy metal door during the interval and requiring hospital treatment – and that between them principal oboist Alexandra Hilton and cor anglais player James Horan would “cover the missing notes” in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which they did with astonishing skill. 

Indeed, the Mahler turned out to be the highpoint of the evening, Wigglesworth considerably more relaxed with his orchestra than in recent months, stepping back from the fray to allow plentiful breathing space in a piece that lives by its spontaneous gestures, teasing hiatuses and poetic flavourings. 

Between the playful charm of the opening movement and easeful bliss of the finale, the scherzo bristled with folk-like devilment (guest leader Roberto Ruisi’s tantalising violin solos) while the adagio’s ultimate transcendence becalmed its anguished undercurrents. Soprano Elizabeth Watts’ emergence in the final movement possessed that magical childlike fusion of fear and innocence. Most of all, there was penetrating clarity throughout this performance, the SSO sensitive to the subtleties and hitting the climaxes with sparkling elan.

We could have done with more of that in Judith Weir’s Forest, which she describes as “a modern tone poem” characterised by ever-shifting moods and colours. While the former were explicit in Wigglesworth’s free-flowing vision, there was something indistinct about the textural detail, even in this hall’s crystalline acoustics, a clear sense that keener shading between instrumental colourings might have sharpened the presentation. Was the simple Brittenesque opening not an obvious clue?

There were frustrating tendencies, too, in soloist Daniel Pioro’s account of Britten’s pre-World War II Violin Concerto. The positivity in his performance was for the most part stimulating, particularly in the blustery Scherzo, but where Pioro’s playing strayed into more roughshod territory the true spirit of the piece – even its underlying whiffs of foreboding – seemed to evaporate. 

Thursday’s second SSO concert was altogether more consistent, featuring two brilliantly contrasted works: Unsuk Chin’s electrifying concerto followed by the towering grandeur of Bruckner’s Symphony No 7.

Central to the Chin was soloist Alban Gerhardt, whose performance was a triumph of the seemingly impossible. This went way beyond mere virtuosity. Gerhardt’s gymnastic fingering, his precision tuning even where the South Korean composer prescribes notes off the diatonic grid, the sheer explosive depth of his tone production, all contributed to a mesmerising display of exceptional musicianship. 

Even when he burst a string mid-concerto there was no let-up. Gerhardt snatched SSO principal cello Rudi de Groote’s cello, setting off a chain reaction of instrument exchanges among the section before the orchestra picked up again from where it left off. Far from killing the enjoyment, this moment of danger simply raised the entertainment stakes in a performance excitable for its organic inevitability, charismatic delivery and breathtaking showmanship.

The Bruckner proved the perfect foil, a symphony that Wigglesworth and his orchestra performed several weeks ago in Scotland, but which here, in the lively Snape acoustics, seemed so much riper, more purposefully driven, more wholesome and convincing in its reasoning. The strings possessed a ravishing fullness, the wind and brass equal in richness. 

It was forceful without the bombast, a feast of meaty colours and powerful emotion, a monstrous but stimulating edifice. Stepping out into the Suffolk countryside in the dimming midsummer light, with the River Alde meandering through the swaying reed beds, offered a welcome relaxant. A magical place.

Ken Walton

Both concerts were broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and are now available on BBC Sounds