VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

It’s over a decade since the BBC SSO’s memorable focus on the Vaughan Williams symphonies under Andrew Manze opened our ears to those that might not be so familiar as the Sea Symphony or Sinfonia Antartica. One bold, bumper London 2012 Proms programme ambitiously packaged together the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth, the first of these proving a revelation for many unfamiliar with its enigmatic harshness and perfunctory conclusion.

In the SSO’s first Thursday concert of 2025 the Fourth was revisited, this time under the orchestra’s current chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, in this instance as the brusque conclusion to a journey through Mozart and Britten. That, in itself, offered a broader context for the work. Where Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, K491 – the sole presentation in a short first half – elicited a ruminative Classicism tinged with Romantic pre-echoes, Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes ‘A Time There Was…’, a quintessential gem from his twilight years, proved a salty appetiser to the surface brutalism of the Vaughan Williams.

Wigglesworth’s own view of this 1930s’ symphony seemed both forceful and cautious. The compelling severity of the opening – spookily heralded by one of many mobile phone alerts going off among the audience in anticipation of Storm Eowyn – was instantly captivating, the SSO in virile form, responsive to the music’s unrelenting dissonance. Yet out of this deepening abyss emerged moments of unmatched beauty, rich veins of Vaughan Williams’ calm, even suggestions of autumnal mists conjured up by densely atmospheric lower-string textures.

In the Andante moderato, underpinned by its anxiously persistent walking bass, Wigglesworth gleaned an aching austerity, a Shostakovich-like leanness heightened by its powerful organic crescendos. The final two movements, linked in a manner similar to Beethoven’s Fifth, marked a potent return to the belligerence of the start, mischievously insurgent in the Scherzo and curtly ferocious in the barbarous Epilogue fugato. It wasn’t the tightest, most terrorising final vision of this symphony, but it had plenty to say, especially in terms of its softer undercurrents.

In relation to that, Britten’s 1974 Suite was an exquisite confection, throwing up folk melodies and tossing them aside with frivolous abandon and invention in the course of its five-movement journey. From the dream-like soundscape of The Bitter Withy (echoes of Britten’s own A Midsummer Night’s Dream) to the rustic vulgarity and warped harmonic logic of Hankin Booby and brusquely playful strings of Hunt the Squirrel, this was a gripping performance.

Wigglesworth played the dual role of soloist-director in the Mozart concerto, serving up a vision that certainly drew out the reflective dimension of the minor-key work, but never quite got to grips with its inner drive. Everything was tidy and precise but generally inconsequential, even in an ambitious first movement cadenza that veered towards Busoni and beyond. There was something a little too sleepy about the Larghetto, and where a sudden spark lit up the opening Finale theme, the ensuing variations fell short of matching that promise.

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The programme is repeated at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on Sunday 26 January, which will also be recorded for future broadcast.