Classical review: BBC SSO: Hear and Now - City Halls, Glasgow

By KEN WALTON
Published on 08/10/2012 00:00

CONVICTION is an admirable trait in an artist – the self-belief that drives an idea to its ultimate end, no matter how ephemeral, and somehow makes it work.

BBC SSO: Hear and Now

City Halls, Glasgow

* * * *

Take French composer Mark Andre’s hij 1, the first few minutes of which are a silence, effectively mimed by the large orchestra, before it embarks on an ethereal journey of strangely concocted sound effects, barely audible at times, ranging from the clattering of woodwind keys and weird whistling of flutes, to plectrum-struck violins and human huffing and puffing.

This was the finale to Saturday’s Hear and Now concert by the BBC SSO. Its intoxicating allure – a soundscape that hijacked your brain like a drug – amazingly countered the initial instinct to laugh out loud and sabotage the performance, which one or two audience coughs and a squeaky seat almost did.

Full marks, though, to the SSO for bringing it off, no matter how ridiculous its premise may have seemed.

And to conductor Matthias Pintscher, whose own conviction was matched by a genuine insight of the music’s purpose, something the composer’s impenetrable programme note failed to offer.

This unexpectedly engrossing concert opened with Magnus Lindberg’s Souvenir, a deeply sonorous piece of musical nostalgia for 20th century musical awakenings; and included fellow Finnish composer Kaija Sarriaho’s Adriana Songs from her opera Adrian Mater, sung with occasionally overblown tone by Patricia Bardon, and Johannes Maria Staud’s bizarre On Comparative Meteorology, a kind of 1950s sci-fi B-movie soundtrack with contemporary attitude.