VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

Eric Lu is not what you’d call the most exuberant of interpreters. The young American-born pianist, who rocketed to international fame as winner of the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition at the age of only 20, is an artist who applies consideration before panache. We witnessed this two years ago when he played a cool Chopin with the BBC SSO. 

That’s not to say his Grieg Piano Concerto with the SCO on Friday lacked showmanship – after which, in any case, his flashy Chopin encore dispelled any doubts lingering in that direction. And where superlative bravado did surface in the Grieg it did so with mindful and inter-relational context. There was much poetic reflection where others settle for sustained urgency.

If this introduced a certain ambivalence to the performance, giving us becalmed episodes in the outer movements where Lu’s reluctance to push the music forward had a questionable tendency to counter its natural momentum, it also offered flecks of insight into the concerto’s inner charm. 

Under American conductor Ryan Bancroft (a one-time Leverhulme Conducting Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) the SCO unveiled gems of orchestral detail that so often get lost in the wash. When, for instance, has the central Adagio ever sounded so timeless, the strings patiently teasing out the opening theme with subliminal warmth, over which Lu’s pianism emerged in a liberated (if not completely flawless) flow of self-expression. 

Where the opening movement bore faltering momentum, the Finale enjoyed a more convincing exuberance, its breezy rusticity imbued with a modicum of wistfulness that further stamped this performance with distinctiveness of its own. 

The overall programme theme was Nordic, a happy coincidence in the wake of last week’s Nordic Music Days festival. Before the Norwegian sounds of Grieg came Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi’s Lucioles, a short work from 2011 that translates an evocative haiku describing a lake illuminated by fireflies by French writer François JJ Ribes into a vivid impressionistic soundscape. Swarms of orchestral density are shot through with darting flecks of solo instrumentation, which Bancroft engineered with delicate and shimmering precision. A pity about the unanswered mobile phone that antagonised and outlived the final stillness.

As SCO violinist Aisling O’Dea suggested in her thoughtful spoken introduction to the concert, there was a literal sense of journey implicit in this programme, where the final destination was Finland and Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, famous for its radiant Swan Hymn and an ending that keeps you guessing as to which repeated chord is actually the last.

As with the Grieg, it took time to truly establish its persona. The impatient gathering of motives that mark the opening lacked bite and anticipation, leaving the first movement a little short of conviction. That changed instantly with the slow movement where Bancroft established a neat combination of edgy but delicate persistence, homing in on the Mahler influences that colour its wilder moments. The Finale delivered in literal terms but lacked that necessary coating of wonderment. The final chords, touched by a perceivable anxiety, echoed that matter-of-factness.

 Ken Walton

This programme is repeated in Aberdeen Music Hall on Sat 9 Nov.
Andrea Tarrodi’s Serenade in Seven Colours is available on the SCO’s Digital Series from 10 Nov – 10 Dec. See www.sco.org.uk for details.