Ravel : Valses nobles et sentimentales
Brahms : Double Concerto (Nicola Benedetti, violin; Leonard Elschenbroich, cello)
Lutoslawski : Concerto for Orchestra
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Yan Pascal Tortelier
This evening got off to a very poor start with an astonishingly turgid account of the Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales. I've known Tortelier's conducting for years, and usually I've liked his work, but this was frankly shocking for a musician of his calibre. The sound was thick and graceless, the rhythms pulled about wilfully, and there was precious little charm about it, Gallic or otherwise.
Things didn't improve much for the Brahms. Listening to Brahms is a bit like eating stollen. When it's well done, it's wonderful, rich, sweet, spicy, enticing and moreish, and even if you indulge to the point of indigestion, the trip's been worth it. Done wrong - and it's so easy to do it wrong - it's lumpen and stodgy, even if all the ingredients are correct. So it proved tonight. Two excellent young soloists, playing with a fine, warm tone, and nicely responsive to one another, deserved better support than they got from Tortelier's po-faced and leaden direction. The last movement was the most convincing, but even that lacked vitality.
Perhaps because I'm far less familiar with the work, the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra, after the interval, sounded rather better, with more energy to it. Yet even here, the last movement, which when I last heard it (in January) had been the strongest, seemed to go on just a little bit too long, the circling, cycling thematic material not building up cohesively, but merely being repetitive. However, the orchestra made the most of the virtuoso display and the explosive climax to finally give us something like a rousing conclusion to an otherwise sadly disappointing evening from a conductor of whom I expect far better things.
[Next : 17th December]
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