Tag Archives: Lorenza Borrani

SCO / Borrani / Johannsen

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

What promised on paper to be an enjoyably unpretentious programme by the SCO proved to be exactly that. A bubbly Rossini overture, Beethoven’s emotive concert aria Ah, perfido!, the set of Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge that set Britten on course to international fame, and Beethoven’s perfunctory Eighth Symphony benefitted more from the dynamic self-motivation of their delivery than the routine miscellany of their grouping.

Much of that dynamism came from Italian violinist/director Lorenza Borrani, quite the fireball, whose energetic, edge-of-the-seat presence was a visible inspiration injecting heated interaction into so much of the delivery. It’s a mode of performance the SCO excels at – vital elements of the music flitting from section to section, instrument to instrument, like a seamless passing of the parcel. It’s wonderful to watch, even better to listen to.

As an opener, Rossini’s overture to The Barber of Seville struck a joyous note, its marshalling opening chords a rip-roaring wake-up call before the expectant warmth of the slow introduction and ever-increasing exuberance of its dash to the finish line. Besides the ensemble’s bright-lit incision, it was especially revealing to hear solo lines emerge with such unique character, not least those comic effects – whether deliberate or not – emanating from the raw animalistic trilling of the natural horns. 

What followed was a world away from Rossini’s boisterous opera: the torment of Greek princess Deidamia, abandoned by her lover Achilles, expressed through anguished soliloquy in Beethoven’s early-composed Ah, perfido!. American soprano Robin Johannsen was a gripping presence centre-stage, her vocal delivery as trenchant as it was heartfelt, her timbre blessed with a defining edge that oozed vibrance and character. The reactiveness of the orchestra was as supportive as it was reflective, even if the errant mobile phone erupting in the final bars was a spooky, jarring intervention.

Britten’s 1937 Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge – in many ways a portrait compilation of his teacher’s complex personal traits – offered a substantial conclusion to the concert’s opening half. It was also where Borrani exerted her most memorable influence. The kaleidoscopic nature of this performance was its greatest strength, the vigorous pungency of the Introduction and Theme boldly preemptive of a sequence variously tossed between the wistful wrong-note waltzing of the Romance, the brusque galumphing of the Wiener Waltzer, the sobriety of the Funeral March, the high-spirited Aria Italiana, the time-travelling Bourée classique and dizzying Moto Perpetuo. The spectral weirdness of the penultimate Chant was especially magical.

The Beethoven symphony in a short second half was the evening’s least successful enterprise. That’s not to say the pliability of this interpretation was any less stimulating; there was still a sense of genuine spontaneity at play. But there were awkward issues with tempi, occasional lapses in exact coordination, a palpable nervousness at times, a general sense that the big picture was not wholly within sight, that rather killed the emphatic impact of this eccentric symphony.

Ken Walton

SCO / Borrani

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has more “showbiz” personalities on its list of regular guest leader/directors, but Italian violinist Lorenza Borrani achieves a richness of string sound from just 24 players which immediately distinguished the opening bars of Haydn’s Symphony No 56 in C Major.

Hers was an approach to the composer of daringly deliberate tempi, with the fullest expression of every dynamic contrast – and there are many – in its four movements, underlining how Haydn was setting a template for his successors.

Occasionally a player ran a little ahead of her animated indications from the concert-master’s chair, and the intonation of the natural horns took a while to settle, but the contribution of the reed soloists to the slow movement was superb and the ensemble engagement with the music’s playfulness was always captivating.

That sense of fun is also crucial to Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No 1, written 200 years later, even if the frolics are often veiled in darkness. The six movements range fantastically widely, with the more obvious ingredients including the baroque music of Vivaldi and Corelli suggested by the title, South American dance music and the prepared piano experiments of John Cage.

Jan Waterfield was in the place the composer himself filled for the earliest performances, at the harpsichord and an electric keyboard and lap-top set-up producing a digital version of the prepared piano part. Those opening and closing utterances are among the more sombre moments in the work, which is hugely virtuosic for the two violin soloists – Borrani partnered by the SCO’s Marcus Barcham Stevens – particularly in the climactic fourth movement cadenza. After that the slide into tango-time is a happy relief, but it did not seem in the least odd.

With the pizzicato exchanges by the violinists calling to mind duelling banjos, principal bass James Kenny contributing a fine jazz bass passage and the slow movement employing a chromatic descent similar to those found in music from Henry Purcell to Led Zeppelin, the work leaves few potential avenues unexplored. The quality of this performance of what is a hugely demanding score was its best advocate.

A fascinating balanced programme was completed by the two movements of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No 8. The opening in the cellos and basses again impressed for their resonance in the City Hall and there was nothing less precise about Borrani’s Schubert than there had been in the Haydn.

Only the three (crucial) trombones made this an unusually large SCO on stage, but it lacked nothing symphonically at all, just as the composer’s two movements stand perfectly well on their own.

Accuracy in pacing and dynamic expression was again the director’s way, and there was no playing to the gallery from the SCO’s excellent wind soloists, although all were on finest form.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Christopher Bowen

SCO / Borrani

Posted on by

City Halls, Glasgow

So you think you know Beethoven 7? Think again, because the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s latest guest leader/director, Lorenza Borrani, can make you hear one of the most popular symphonies in the classical canon with fresh ears.

The over-cited opinion of Richard Wagner that it is “the apotheosis of the dance” – quoted in full in the concert programme – is nonsense word salad (in English anyway) when presented alongside a performance which made the point from the first chord, which sounded uncannily like a fiddle orchestra embarking on a set of reels. Borrani is the apotheosis of what a player/director should be, the eyes of all the musicians – and many in the audience for that matter – on the concertmaster and her eloquent bow.

For faithful SCO-followers – a growing band if this fine Glasgow concert attendance is any indication – Borrani was instantly recognisable as having been the guest leader for previous principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s memorable cycle of Schumann symphonies, recorded on the local Linn label. The pandemic postponed plans for her debut directing the orchestra, but it should be a regular feature of SCO seasons from now on. Borrani’s understanding of the significance of the space between the notes in Beethoven’s score, of the spicy rhythms of the music and the precision gradations of the dynamics were all served with ensemble precision that was at times quite startling.

Of course the SCO’s excellent winds brought their A-game to the performance, but it was the strings that really shone in Borrani’s reading, with a particular swinging, legato approach from the lower strings and especially the cellos, that was simultaneously quite different and clearly absolutely correct . The section’s four note phrase towards the end of the opening movement and the theme at the start of the Allegretto second movement set the pattern for an approach that was sustained throughout the  work. The energy of the scherzo and syncopation of the finale occasioned wide smiles both on stage and in the auditorium.

This revelatory account of the Seventh Symphony was preceded by a first half similarly full of fascination. Borrani’s selection of seven pieces by colourful 20th century Venetian Bruno Maderna from his reworkings of the 1501 collection Odhecaton suggest that she is very much a fellow-traveller with SCO principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. As violinist Siun Milne put it in her amusing spoken introduction to the concert, the invention of the printing press meant this collection of early music “went viral” (in contemporary parlance) at the start of the 16th century. Maderna’s arrangements, while faithful to the originals, recasts them for modern instruments in what was plainly a fun exercise for composer and players alike.

It would be wrong to say the same thing of Gustav Mahler’s orchestral arrangement of Beethoven’s “Serioso” String Quartet for the Vienna Philharmonic, even if the composer’s purpose was similar. Whether Mahler’s treatment of the dense work enhances the quartet in any way is still debatable, even if David Matthew’s performing edition has rescued it from obscurity. The power and concentration of the piece survives, but the sharp edges are perhaps dulled.

What is beyond debate is that the resulting score sounds fiendishly difficult to play with the level of ensemble coherence Borrani and the SCO strings brought to the project. The slow movement, unsurprisingly, sounded the most Mahleresque, but the way the players rose to the challenge of the phrasing and rhythms of the faster music was more impressive.

Keith Bruce