BBCSSO: Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto

City Halls, Glasgow, 27/11/25

BBCSSO, Delyana Lazarova (conductor), Isata Kanneh‐Mason (piano)

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s 90th Anniversary Season resumed on the night of 27th November in Glasgow’s City Halls with another landmark programme, representing the debut with the orchestra of their new Bulgarian Principal Guest Conductor,  Delyana Lazarova, with a programme that showcased performance skills, ensemble cohesion, conductor vision and artistic partnership to the maximum.  The headline work, played before the interval, was Rachmaninov’s phenomenally challenging Third Piano Concerto with the fabulously talented Isata Kanneh‐Mason as soloist.  The concert opened with a piece for strings, the 2012 revision for string orchestra of American violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery’s 2006 piece for string quintet, ‘Strum’.  After the interval, two masterpieces of twentieth century orchestral picture painting for large orchestra presented a manifesto for a fruitful creative relationship going forward.  Barber’s graphic portrait of transformation from tender affection to psychotic murderous rage, ‘Medea's Dance of Vengeance’ was followed by Debussy’s 3 impressionistic symphonic sketches, ‘La mer’.  Attendance was very satisfactory.  English violinist Charlotte Scott, first violinist and co-founder of the Oculi Ensemble, was our guest leader for the evening.  The concert was recorded for Radio 3 and will broadcast at 7:30 pm on Tuesday 20th  January, after which it will be available on BBC Sounds for 30 days.

‘Strum’ begins with delicate fragments of texture, timbre and melody on solo instruments, both arco and pizzicato, with and without mutes.  But it is strumming that introduces the element of rhythm which acts as a framework and trajectory around which the other elements coalesce and move.  Melodies emerge and become established, evoking infectious moods  that vary from wistful nostalgia to energetic folk dancing and celebration.   Strum’ is an uplifting and mood-enhancing piece, about 8 minutes long, that engages the listener and transports them to a happier place.  A super concert opener, and it received a compelling outing.  A first hearing for me, and I’ll look forward to any future opportunities to catch it again.

The opening theme of Sergey Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor is best described as “deliciously understated”, with the flavour of a Russian folk song.  The listener might wonder “where is Rachmaninov and what have you done with him?”, quickly answered by the piano’s variant of the theme, with its virtuosic runs and cascades.  But there is a difference from the norm in this concerto.  The soloist and orchestra are partners in narration, not antagonists or rivals.  The second theme is in the major and more sunny and romantic.  A third theme feels like a Polish dance.  All are developed, before a return to the opening theme winding down to a spooky mysterious quiet.  All has been leading to the cadenza, and what a cadenza!  Complex and phenomenally virtuosic, in two waves, with an interlude of sweet dialogue between the soloist and various winds.  Throughout, Isata Kanneh-Mason was the picture of imperturbability, composure, poise and grace.  Quite extraordinary.  After a curtailed reprise of the opening theme, the movement ends quietly.  The slow movement is a set of free, imaginative variations (some quite passionate) on another vaguely Russian theme.  A surprise is a glittering brilliant scherzando bravura variation   It looks as if the slow movement will end in idyllic calm, but suddenly the finale erupts with a march-like metre and snappy fanfares, chased by a demonic dance and a more playful mischievous one.  Just when the listener is wondering “are we not getting a Big Tune?”, it arrives, but fairly understated.  Rachmaninov eschews the usual rondo format and plays with our expectations.  All the elements, except the Big Tune, are developed and there are moments of calm and contrasting glitter, but are we going to just settle into an idyllic afterglow?  No, the glittering march reignites and a slow build-up begins.  But to what?  There is a mini-cadenza, brief but wild, and at last the Big Tune returns, swollen with waves of overwhelming passion, concluding with a pyrotechnic coda.  The auditorium erupted with thunderous applause.  Nobody present can have doubted that we had experienced something very special: a revelatory and immersive performance of an almost impossibly technically challenging (but emotionally involving) masterpiece, where the creative vision of soloist, conductor and orchestra were maximally aligned.  Superb.

Samuel Barber’s ‘Medea's Dance of Vengeance’ is a concert piece condensed and re orchestrated from his ballet score for a Martha Graham ballet based on Euripedes’ dramatic retelling of an ancient Greek myth, focussing on the psychological aspects of the narrative.  Medea, a sorceress, princess and wife of Jason (of Argonaut fame), has borne him two sons.  When she finds herself abandoned by him in favour of a princess of Corinth, she goes “full tonto”.  In the Euripedes play, her wrath is unabated until she has slaughtered the new wife, the new wife’s father, and her own two sons by Jason.  “Hell hath no fury …”.  Barber’s piece is scored for a large orchestra.  It opens atmospherically with modal Orphic tropes that place the listener in an idyllic Grecian landscape, suggestive of warm contentment, domestic harmony and tender affection.  Only brief xylophone figures suggest that there is something unseen but disturbing.  There is no mistaking the moment when “a switch flips”.  Dark chording with harps, orchestral piano and timpani could be pure Stravinsky and straight out of ‘Oedipus Rex..  From there, the trajectory is one-way, heading menacingly and inexorably towards violence.  There is something demonic and irresistible in the strange ‘boogie-woogie’ ostinato that emerges on orchestral piano and drives forward.  I’ve known this piece since 1981, from the same borrowed compilation LP on which I found the Second Essay, which appeared in a BBCSSO afternoon concert a week and a half ago..  I’ve had a different recording in a CD box set since 1990.  The grim fascination chills and thrills infinitely more in live performance, especially when conductor and orchestra are ‘in the zone’.  Excellent.

By contrast, Claude Debussy’s ‘La mer’ enjoys enduring popularity and relatively frequent live programming and, whilst I can’t be precise, I reckon I’ve heard it live over the years at least a dozen times, expanding to four times that number if I include catching radio and television broadcasts.  The music is fabulously evocative, not of the sounds of the wind and the sea, but of the visual aspects that inspire painters and affect the mood of the human spectator.  There is always the sensation of movement, whether the constant shifting of focus between detail and the big picture, the interplay of wind and waves, the sparkling reflection of sunlight off wavelets, or the heaving surge of the immense deep.  The musical language is unmistakably French, but also uniquely Debussy.  A performance paints a picture.  With the full orchestral palette of the BBCSSO at her disposal, Delyana Lazarova painted three dynamic and awe-inspiring canvasses.  The verdict?  Well, BBC, I don’t know how you do it but you’ve done it again – another great ‘catch’ that gels perfectly with the BBCSSO.  Ms Lazarova returns in March next year with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’.