RSNO / Sondergard
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
With newly-announced principal double bass Nikita Naumov – transferring from the SCO – in place, the RSNO was this weekend remembering the former leader of the BBC SSO, Laura Samuel, whose death from cancer at only 48 had been a loss to the whole Scottish musical community.
Conductor Thomas Sondergard and the players pulled out all the stops for the occasion, with a second half performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake music that built beautifully from the Act 1 waltz through the sequence of national dances to the final scene of Act 4, added to the more familiar 20th century version of the Suite.
The star turns were Adrian Wilson’s oboe, harpist Pippa Tunnell, and guest leader Ania Safonova, with the flutes and brass also making key contributions, but the whole orchestra was on fire and Sondergard built the music to a magnificent climax. Perhaps the sequence was slightly hampered by the audience applauding each section, but that would have happened at a performance of the ballet so it only reflected how effectively the dancers were being conjured.
The same audience response to the individual movements of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1 could have impaired soloist Ethan Loch’s performance, but his grateful reaction took the edge off any misgivings. More serious was some slight confusion in stage management, primed to dim the lights for the blind pianist’s encore but jumping the gun before the third movement. Sondergard’s swift reaction to that was of a piece with his attentive approach to Loch’s playing throughout the concerto.
While most piano soloists start with a concerto’s printed score before committing works to memory, Loch’s learning by ear is a marvel, and the long first movement of the Beethoven, with its huge virtuosic closing cadenza, was a remarkable demonstration of that. A lightness of touch sometimes seemed lacking in his playing, and his generous addition of two self-composed encores was perhaps gilding the lily, but the device of playing the first of them in darkness was an effective way of sharing his world, and the light music brings to it, with a besotted audience.
The programme had opened with the 1898 Ballade by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s, also a precocious, if not always particular original, talent. The piece made a great opener, however, and the contrast between the large orchestra required for it and the Tchaikovsky with the much reduced ensemble for the Beethoven was eloquent demonstration of the RSNO’s range.
Keith Bruce