Tag Archives: Michael Sanderling

BBC SSO / Sanderling

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City Halls, Glasgow

It is more common, fortunately, that a concert whose immediate charms are not obvious on paper turns out to have a rich subtext and surprising programmatic connections, whether or not they were intended at the event’s conception. Regrettably the opposite turned out to be the case with Thursday’s season concert by the BBC Scottish, which will be repeated at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Sunday afternoon.

What seemed a hit programme started well enough, with a stirring account of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Michael Sanderling conducting the SSO brass, horns and percussion through the disciplined explosion of the music the composer later incorporated into his Third Symphony. Rich-toned and precise here, it is irresistible as a punchy stand-alone and as fine a concert-opener as one might wish to hear, but also a difficult act to follow.

That task fell to Ethan Loch, BBC Young Musician finalist in 2022 and a now a student at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire. Blind from birth, Loch’s ambitions embrace composition and improvisation – both of which would be demonstrated in his encores – but his recital piece here was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 2. Composed before his first numbered concerto, when Chopin was still (just) in his teens, it is a young man’s work, the solo part a virtuoso showpiece and the orchestral writing often thought wanting experience.

Those strengths and deficiencies need not be apparent – the recent RSNO recording with Benjamin Grosvenor under the baton of Elim Cham makes an eloquent argument for both concertos – but they were here. Sanderling gave the 20-year-old pianist the best platform by keeping the orchestra on a tight rein, but Loch’s playing, while accurate and technically secure, was often a little heavy-handed. When the left hand was steadier, in the central Larghetto especially, the increasingly elaborate right hand was more expressive, but the finale lacked the dancing sprightliness it really requires.

For all its melodic riches, there was something slightly lumpen about Sanderling’s account of Dvorak’s New World symphony as well. The SSO strings sounded thicker than usual and the conductor’s tempi seemed very deliberate. There was some fine playing from the winds – Stella McCracken’s oboe and Yann Ghiro’s clarinet in particular – but the fanfare at the start of the last movement failed to give that final theme quite the propulsion it required.

Having said all that, there were clearly many in the very full house who shared few of those reservations, and the box-office appeal of the programme will doubtless work its magic for ticket sales in Edinburgh too.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Michael Sanderling by Marco Borggreve

BBC SSO / Sanderling

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City Halls, Glasgow

Musical dynasties can be problematic for some, but not, it would seem, in the case of conductor Michael Sanderling, son of Kurt and brother/step brother of fellow conductors Stefan and Thomas. He proved his independent worth, without question, in the driving seat of the BBC SSO last week.

The former cellist – and one of considerable, international prizewinning note before he picked up the baton full time just over a decade ago – established instant chemistry with the orchestra in a relatively youthful symphony by Mozart, his 13th, written mostly in Milan at the age of 15. Sanderling wasted no time sourcing a stylish bite from the players – just horns and oboes in addition to the reduced strings – that captured the music’s exuberant decency.

It was a neat touch reducing the Menuetto’s trio section to solo strings, giving added intimacy to this airborne movement, and in the broader context of a performance that packed no shortage of musical surprises and delights, from the teasing tunefulness of the Andante to the rhythmic dash of the outer movements.

Mozart featured again in this affable afternoon concert, as seen through the thicker lens of heavy-duty German Romantic composer and academic Max Reger, his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart. The theme in question is the siciliano-like opener from the A Major Sonata, which in Mozart’s hands was already subjected to exhaustive variation. Reger, as you’d expect, deals with it in more circumspect, a times torrid, terms. 

Sanderling never once allowed dark clouds to assert their presence, instead giving a fleetness of foot to Reger’s restless harmonic contortions – some pretty ingenious ones at that – and therefore freer flight to internal chromatic meanderings that, in less-intuitive hands, might so easily have muddied the momentum. Such, too, was the refinement and grace of the orchestral colourings that the journey towards the concluding fugue, and its exultant closing restatement of the Mozart theme, was one of several thrills and much overall satisfaction.

Coming back to musical families, the afternoon’s solo spot was filled by one of the many prodigious Kanneh-Mason siblings currently in circulation. This was Isata, a pianist of growing stature and musical maturity, as witnessed in recent previous appearances in Scotland. She featured this time in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, noted for its bristling energy and dynamic physicality, but also for the quintessential mysticism that offers some spellbinding contrast in the central movement.

Kanneh-Mason’s performance was beautifully poised and not without fire. She doesn’t yet have the full shoulder power to fully address the ferocious dimensions of this concerto, but the fiery agility of her finger work compensated, and where gentle reflection was called for she delivered it with poetic perfection.   

Ken Walton

BBC SSO / Sanderling

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City Halls, Glasgow

For the second week running, the BBC SSO has played like an orchestra utterly transformed. Why has the sound been so instantly arresting and synergic? How come every moment of attack has been like a bolt of lightning, everyone – audience included – on the edge of their seats?  Why are there smiles of satisfaction and sheer enjoyment on the players’ faces? Easy, it’s all down the conductor.

This week, Michael Sanderling, of the famous German conducting family, was on the podium. From the word go, in this upbeat coupling of Haydn and Mahler, there was a palpable magic in the air. Foremost, he instilled in the orchestra a confidence to express itself: disciplined and super-clean in Haydn’s Cello Concerto No 2, but with a pliable, cosseted warmth that enriched its vital interaction with the soloist Alexey Stadler; and equally Haydnesque in articulating the steely definition of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, but wild and free enough to capture its childlike wonderment.

Stadler’s own performance in the Haydn was a captivating amalgam of exuberance and poise. He conquered effortlessly its challenges – rapidly virtuosic with a tendency towards the topmost reaches of the cello’s fingerboard and beyond – and with a lustrous singing tone that married crystalline focus with hair-raising magnitude. 

There was nothing routine or subordinate in the SSO’s performance, Sanderling – himself a cellist – nurturing every nuance with calculated accuracy and meaningful prominence. Nor, after such a brilliant performance by the Russian soloist, and the audience demanding more, was there much chance of Stadler getting away without an encore. He responded with aching pathos – the haunting unaccompanied strains of the Adagio from the Solo Sonata No 1 by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish-born Jew who suffered oppression under Stalin while living in Soviet Russia.

That moment of resonating contemplation was instantly swept aside in the second half with the jingling bells that introduce Mahler’s Symphony No 4. There are many ways to convey the visionary innocence of this instrumentally-light – for `Mahler – work. Sanderling chose detailed precision as the catalyst for his persuasive solution. 

“Don’t hurry”, indicates the composer in his opening tempo instructions. That was exactly the impression Sanderling imparted, a very Germanic approach that fed the overall performance with powerful, self-generating momentum. Rather than stifling Mahler’s impetuous tempi changes, this heightened their impact, a sense of harnessed ecstasy that, when it was offered release, did so with thrilling abandon. 

The orchestral playing brimmed with electrifying incision and distinctive colourings, as much from the many solo contributions as the integral ensembles. The Adagio, its timeless expression of death and acceptance, served breathtakingly its pivotal role between the devilish Scherzo and Mahler’s final illuminating vision of peace. 

Swedish soprano Miah Persson imbued the Finale’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn text – “Heaven is hung with violins” – with an embracing, motherly charm. The unwinding to ultimate silence was a mind-blowing clincher – milked thoroughly by Sanderling – with which to end.

Ken Walton

This concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast, after which it will be available for 30 days via BBC Sounds