BBCSSO, 20/10/2011

Butterworth : Two English Idylls
Sibelius : Violin Concerto (Akiko Suwanai)
Beethoven : Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral"

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Manze

Many years ago, I recall attending several Scottish Symphony Orchestra concerts in Glasgow, and being gobsmacked, not to say appalled, at the abysmal quality of the playing.  I'm not naming names, because my thoughts on the subject would probably qualify as libellous, but I always did wonder how their Principal Conductor at the time actually got the job.  Returning to settle in Glasgow again some thirty years later, I found an orchestra changed beyond all recognition, and now a seriously good band with a distinctly interesting line in programming.  The only problem now was that it tended to operate in mini-seasons, which also tended to clash with my absences from town, so I was almost completely reliant on radio broadcasts to hear them.  For the last couple of years, however, the BBCSSO has "smoothed" out its appearances into something like a normal concert season, which has finally made it possible for me to include their concerts in my planning, and since the interest of their programming has not diminished one whit, I'm very pleased to be able to do so.  I suppose that's the advantage of being a radio orchestra for a heavily subsidised organisation - their agenda, as concert-makers, is a little different from that of a standard symphony orchestra.  Long may that state of affairs continue.

Tonight's programme belongs to their "The Year 1911" theme, with the Butterworth, and what should have been tonight's concerto, the Nielsen Violin Concerto, both composed in that year.  Butterworth died on the Somme in 1916, ridiculously young, and leaving only a tiny legacy of works, yet his style is immediate and distinctive, "English pastoral" at its sweetest and most nostalgic.  The second of the two Idylls dragged a little, but there was much tenderness and poetry in this reading.

The soloist for the Nielsen concerto having been obliged to cancel at the last minute due to ill health, one can only imagine the scramble on the part of the orchestra to find a suitable replacement, and in the end, they had to accept a change of programme.  Hardly surprising; the Nielsen's not the most frequently played of concertos, though that was a large part of the interest of tonight's programme for me.  That said, as mentioned last week, the Sibelius is right at the top of my list of favourites, so I wasn't unhappy with the substitution.  Ms. Suwanai produces a full, round tone, firm and sure, and under the circumstances I'm inclined to be indulgent if the first movement lacked something of the wild, rhapsodic flight I like in it, and the last movement was just a little flat-footed.  There were compensations in some fine detail from the orchestra that can often pass unnoticed in recordings.

Andrew Manze, of course, is a noted violinist in his own right, though primarily a specialist in the Early Music field, so I was wondering what kind of Beethoven we were going to get.  One suited to the type of orchestra, was the answer, an unabashedly Romantic reading, lush and lyrical.  He's an interesting conductor to watch; with some, you realise quickly enough that you'd have to be in the orchestra to understand exactly what the gestures mean.  With Manze, it's perfectly obvious what he wants, when and from whom, which is refreshing.  There was a lot of careful shaping going on in the "Pastoral", and the only place where I missed a more "period" approach was in the storm, which I thought lacked a little precision of articulation.  I have to admit that of late, I've largely been listening to the "Pastoral" in Liszt's astonishing transcription, which has probably had some effect on my perception of the full score, but this was a good performance, polished and well-paced.