VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

Thursday’s BBC SSO programme wasn’t quite what everyone expected. From the advertised line-up of Lutoslawski, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, Lutoslawski’s short Little Suite had been quietly excised to facilitate the continuity of BBC Radio 3’s live broadcast. According to foyer intelligence circulating beforehand, manoeuvring two concert grands onstage for a Mendelssohn double concerto so soon into the programme would have played havoc with the ears of radio listeners. 

As it happened, they, and we, were treated to a blaring pop song mid-Mendelssohn from an errant mobile phone, its panicked owner struggling to silence it. Radio presenter Kate Molleson couldn’t have been much clearer in her concert preamble: “turn them off!” 

Despite all that, the resulting programme proved evenly-balanced and not short of revealing, enjoyable, even thrilling moments. At the helm was conductor Delyana Lazarova in only her second appearance as the orchestra’s principal guest conductor. These are early days for her with the SSO, but already she cuts a confident, motivational presence. Not everything fell perfectly into place – mistimed tutti attacks in the concerto, balance issues in Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony – but there were plentiful highs in the performances to suggest a fruitful partnership ahead.

The orchestra were joined by Duo Játékok – aka French pianists Naïri Badal and Adélaïde Panaget – in Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in A flat major. It’s a monumental piece – around 45 minutes – which the composer wrote when only 15. In both scoring and style it bears considerable witness to Beethoven, and where the content doesn’t always justify its length (not least the mammoth opening movement), youthful exuberance pervades a score in which Mendelssohn’s nascent fingerprint is unmistakably persistent. 

It certainly suited the bubbly personalities of Duo Játékok, instantly demonstrated in the conversational to-ing-and-fro-ing of the hectic piano writing. It was like watching a Wimbledon rally as phrases were parried back and forth with increasing insistence, the first movement rippling with high-energy drama, the slow lyrical Andante (once the phone had stopped) calmly pre-echoing the composer’s many Songs Without Words, then a whirlwind of contrapuntal complexity driving the swashbuckling finale to its perfunctory conclusion. 

There was splashiness in some of the piano playing, but the French twosome made up for that in dexterity and spirit, and in a calming encore – Kurtag’s piano four-hand arrangement of Bach’s Sonatina from the Cantata Actus Tragicus – which they memorably included in an earlier SSO visit four years ago.

After the truculent youth of Mendelssohn, the second half turned to the near-death utterances of Tchaikovsky in his Sixth Symphony. You have to admire Lazarova for the risk she took in adopting such an achingly slow tempo in the initial Adagio. While logic supported it – a heaving sigh of resignation – in practice it failed to fully convince, ripped of genuinely soulful intensity. Where the opening is repeated after the long pause, it was as if Lazarova was saying “okay, let’s try that from the start again”. Thankfully the arrival of the Allegro came with a keen sense of purpose and direction. 

Where the opening movement was now awash with impetuous turmoil, the quirky lilt of the ensuing 5/4 waltz, introduced glowingly by a suave cello section, offered smiling respite before the emphatic pomp of a third movement whose exultant ending frequently tricks audiences into thinking it’s the end of the symphony. No exception here, as the applause rang out, only to be hushed by the return of the sombre opening mood for the actual finale, a powerfully exhaustive, despairing farewell. 

Tonight’s Aberdeen performance replaces the Mendelssohn concerto with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 5 and soloist Esther Yoo, and opens with Lutoslawski’s Little Suite.

Ken Walton

This concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and is available via BBC Sounds for 30 days