Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 1

City Halls, Glasgow 15/2/26

BBCSSO, Chloé Van Soeterstède (conductor); Hana Chang (violin)

Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ev2j6q

The third afternoon concert of the 2025-26 season of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow’s City Halls was on Sunday 15th February and once again delivered a “basket of goodies” programme.  The headline work after the interval was Rachmaninov’s 1895 Symphony No.1, relatively rarely programmed but always worth the candle, in my book.  In the first half, Debussy’s louchely dreamy fin de siècle ‘Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune’ was followed by Prokofiev’s colourfully quirky 1935 Violin Concerto No. 2 with American violinist (and BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artist) Hana Chang as soloist.  Principal Guest Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, French violinist/violist/conductor Chloé Van Soeterstède, guested.  Turkish virtuoso and former pupil of Pinchas Zukerman, Emre Engin, was our latest guest leader for the afternoon.  The concert was recorded for later broadcast on Radio 3.  Attendance was modest but entirely satisfactory (just under 400) for a Glasgow Sunday afternoon.

Matthew Higham’s flute solo set the languorous mood perfectly at the beginning of the Debussy, immediately adopted by harp, horns and winds in turn.  The strings shimmered seductively.  Teasing harmonic ambiguity wavered between chromaticism and fragments of whole-tone scales.  Outside, a soggy Merchant City cowered under torrential rain, but inside warm Arcadian breezes seemed to waft seductively through the City Halls.  Shifting harmonies seemed to hint at drifting distant cloud shadows.  Snatches of birdsong escaped from the winds.  The first of the afternoon’s many solos from the guest leader’s Gigli instrument was magical.  The latitude with phrasing that Chloé Van Soeterstède allowed to the solos was rewarded with playing that was even more captivating than usual.  A super concert opener.

I love both of Prokofiev’s two violin concerti, but the Second remains my favourite.  The pensive, melancholy G minor opening theme (common time on the page but 5/4 to the ear) received a lugubrious solo cantabile statement with richly warm tone from Hana Chang’s Amati, echoed ominously in a different key by the strings, prompting a scurrying anxious dance as a second theme punctuated by taps on the bass drum.  The third theme, slower and achingly romantic like many in the Romeo and Juliet ballet, was scrumptious.  The movement proceeded, fusing these three disparate elements in different combinations, in an interpretation that emphasised the nervous unsettled mood of the piece, a reading I consider optimal.  A lovely weary sigh from the horns heralded the slightly cheeky pizzicato conclusion.  As an aside, I was tickled to see a prime 17th-century instrument being played while foot-tapping a pedal advanced the page on a 21st-century tablet; state-of-the-art from eras separated by 4 centuries.  A leisurely choice of tempo for the Andante assai 12/8 allowed its rhapsodic picture-painting quality the fullest expression.  I always imagine a ballerina automaton pirouetting atop a music box, becoming animated, detaching and experiencing bittersweet human emotions and disappointments, before returning to her pivot as the clockwork winds down, as if the magic were but a vanishing dream.  Side drum, bass drum and castanets aid the gutsy Spanish rhythm and circus vibe of the triple-time B-flat major dance that launches the finale, with colourful episodes that include a demonic waltz and another with a hectic syncopated irregular-metre with more taps on the bass drum that becomes the hectic possessed coda.  Fabulous playing from soloist and orchestra in perfect partnership with the conductor.  Thrilling.

I have written before how I first encountered (and was smitten by) Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony (still my favourite of the 3) in the early 1970s on BBC1.  ‘André Previn's Music Night’ used to feature the maestro with the LSO, analysing a masterwork with illustrations from the orchestra, before a complete performance; Rach 2 was one such, and it blew me away.  But the Second Symphony actually came to my ken after the First, and it was also BBC1 that lit that particular touch paper.  From 1968 to 1971,‘Panorama’, the documentary and current affairs programme, had the opening fanfare of the Allegro con fuoco finale as its theme tune.  When I heard the same in a Radio 3 concert broadcast, I made the link and was on the lookout for opportunities to hear it again (which, I would venture, were less rare then).  Later, in 1979, I read in the disputed (and probably apocryphal) memoirs of Shostakovich (‘Testimony’) the anecdote that the shambolic premiere of the symphony in St Petersburg in 1897 under Glazunov (later Shostakovich’s teacher) was due almost entirely to the notoriously alcoholic Glazunov being as tight as a newt (though his lack of talent as a conductor, the programme including two other premieres and a woeful dearth of rehearsal time will not have helped).  The young Rachmaninov suffered a nervous breakdown, depression and an extended period of writer’s block, eventually cured by combined hypnotherapy and an early form of neurolinguistic programming.  Glazunov: nul points.

The First is a proper full-on D-minor symphony, with all the gravitas that that implies, the first movement darkly and turbulently melodramatic and the earliest manifestation of the composer’s lifelong obsession with the ‘Dies Irae’ plainchant.  All 4 movements begin with the same 4-note snarl (which makes multiple disguised reappearances), but then treat the same ‘Dies Irae’ thematic material quite differently.  The glowering short slow introduction led to the haunted first theme, both based on the chant.  The second theme is slower, more expansive and lyrical with a mood of romantic yearning (and a hint of Russian orientalism in the turn of phrase).  A big crash launched the development, starting with a dramatic fugal passage followed by plenty of inventive and satisfying counterpoint.  The modified recapitulation was also contrapuntally enriched.  Chloé shaped a characterful interpretation that threw the drama, tension and contrasts into the sharpest relief, without a trace of caricature.  The playing from the orchestra, especially the strings and particularly the cellos, was phenomenal and had me musing, as often before, whether string-playing conductors have a tendency towards a special talent in this regard.  But perhaps that’s just a cliché (after all, I was rarely moved by Peter Oundjian).  Shimmering muted F-major strings give the fluttering scherzo a feather-light quality, though there are hints of underlying darkness in the bass instruments.  Its central section has a more fluid tempo, which boasted another fine violin solo from Emre.  The movement ended cheekily with vanishing gossamer lightness.  The ‘snarl’ is tamed for the B-flat major Larghetto, its tender main theme derived from the oriental second theme of the first movement and it was deliciously introduced by Yann Ghiro’s clarinet, then commented on by other solo winds.  A menacing return of the snarl with glowering muted horns (oh, those BBCSSO horns – fabulous) threatened the idyll in a central section.  But the front desks of violins and cellos sang reassuringly (and gorgeously) and the calm was restored for two hushed clarinets to conclude.  The finale burst into life with the snarl transformed into an exhortation towards D-major rejoicing and the brassy glittering ‘Panorama’ fanfare set about it.  A build-up to a Russian dance pushes past the attempted stalling by muted horns and carries us to a second theme of the ‘Big Tune’ variety.  Rachmaninov lets the cellos release the tension for an oboe solo and an orientalist departure (to which they respond singing), before ramping it up again as the ‘Dies Irae’ becomes more frantic and top-heavy until it crashes to the floor with a resounding blow of the tam-tam.  Slower, but with grit and determination, it gathers itself up again, and with the snarl transformed to a defiant gesture and in true Tchaikovsky fashion, shakes its fist at Fate.  Not ultimately triumphant, perhaps, but unmistakably indomitable.  This was a dramatic and characterful performance of Rach 1 that awarded it the advocacy it deserves.  Soeterstède: douze points.