The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Glasgow City Halls
We look to the BBC SSO for intelligent programmes, combining much loved classics with lesser known works, both classical and contemporary. Tonight’s concert is no disappointment.
Tonight we have three contrasting perspectives on the twentieth century. First Elena Langer’s Orchestral Suite from her 2016 opera Figaro Gets a Divorce, which relocates Mozart’s characters to a twentieth century world of nationalism and political instability. Then Shostakovich’s only violin concerto, written at the height of Stalin’s oppression. And last Dohnanyi’s First Symphony written in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century in the declining years of the Hapsburg empire.
Langer’s opera was commissioned by David Poultney, in his capacity as Artistic Director of Welsh National Opera. Poultney also wrote the libretto, which drew on Beaumarchais’ play La Mere Coupable (1792) and Odon von Horvath’s dark comedy Figaro Gets a Divorce (1936). It was performed by WNO to considerable acclaim in 2016, in sequence with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s Barber of Seville. The orchestral suite was premiered in Seattle on 9th January 2020, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev. The transformation from opera to coherent orchestra piece was described by Langer in her programme note as ‘less straightforward’ than she thought. What we hear is a short (17 minute), but varied, piece which ranges from an atmospheric opening (‘cicadas, insects and birds in a warm night garden’), through lyrical love scene, anxious flight, threatening macabre tango, nostalgic reminiscence to a final movement entitled A Mad Day, where each character’s music is threaded together as ‘the verses of a Rondo‘. Whether we can read into this the threat of twentieth century nationalism and dictatorship, without being told or seeing the opera, I doubt, but it is immensely varied and interesting and deserves the warm reception it receives from the City Halls audience.
What follows is more special. Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1 is always welcome; we recall Nicola Benedetti’s 2016 performance, as well as previous BBC SSO performances. Tonight we have the Scottish debut of Canadian- Japanese violinist Karen Gomyo, already much acclaimed in North America, who has recently made her home in Berlin. She gives a masterful rendition of Shostakovich’s famously demanding concerto to the great delight of the audience. From the desolately reflective nocturne, through the intense frenzied scherzo (one of the earliest introductions to Shostakovich’s famous DSCH motif, representing himself), to the slow movement, the passacaglia, which develops from melancholy, mournful to an increasingly suffering lament to the serious, angry ‘burlesque’ with its all too brief orchestral respite, there is no question of Karen Gomyo’s mastery of the music. This is without question the stand-out performance of the evening.
The second half of the concert is given over to Dohnanyi. The Austro-Hungarian composer writes beautiful, well crafted music, and the orchestra tonight is expertly conducted by Hungarian guest conductor, Gergely Maderas. However, the overall effect, though very pleasant to listen to, and evocative of both early twentieth century Romantic Viennese music and a gentle strain of Hungarian patriotism, is a little underwhelming. We set our sights high at BBC SSO concerts, and perhaps here we have a decently performed Dohnányi a little cast into the shade by a 5 star Shostakovich.
