RSNO, 25/10/2014

Strauss : Metamorphosen
Beethoven : Overture to Fidelio
Bartók : Concerto for Orchestra

Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Thomas Søndergård

A concert without a soloist is a fairly rare thing, and judging from the low attendance, more than a little disconcerting to a potential audience, but they had missed the point of tonight's programme.  There was a soloist - the orchestra itself.  The evening began with one of the most remarkable fruits of Richard Strauss's Indian summer, the Metamorphoses for 23 solo strings, for which the players (or at least, the violins and violas amongst them) stood, rather than sitting.

It's a solemn, intensely thoughtful piece, in which the musicians weave a dense, rich tapestry, every instrument a thread, every thread individual, yet also part of a whole.  At half-an-hour in duration, it can sometimes drag, but Søndergård kept up the intensity and the flow of the music, sustaining the interest to the end.  There were one or two points of slightly dubious intonation, but it's a very complex work, and I suspect that faultless intonation is an extremely rare occurence.

After the sombre fervour of the Strauss, it was sensible to have the interval, and the second half of the concert was in an entirely different register.  Strauss fleetingly quotes the funeral march of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony at the end of Metamorphosen, so finding Beethoven again to open the second half was quite logical, but this was Beethoven in jubilatory mode, luminous and exhilarating.

The uplifting spirit of the Fidelio Overture is also found in Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, which is almost exactly contemporary with Metamorphosen, and similarly the work of a man near the end of his life - although Strauss turned out to have quite a few more compositions under his belt than even he had suspected - but the two pieces could not be more different otherwise.  Bartók puts the full orchestra to contribution, revelling in the variety of texture and colour available from the forces to hand, playing with moods, sometimes serious, sometimes mysterious, often quirky, and by the end, downright exultant.

Much of tonight's performance was very good, and in the last movement in particular, Søndergård kept impressive control of the whirling strings, which maintained excellent articulation throughout, but the control was perhaps just a little too tight.  I prefer a slightly less inhibited reading, and there was a degree of elation missing here.  Still, as a showcase for the orchestra, the whole evening was accomplished and admirable.

[Next : 26th October]