Classical review: RSNO

Published on Sunday 8 November 2009 20:40

ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA *** GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

NICOLA Benedetti pulled in the biggest crowd of the season for her Glasgow appearance with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. It's become an annual phenomenon, and one that any orchestra would give its eye teeth for.

She was also playing a work that is the centrepiece of her latest album, Bruch's Violin Concerto, and in her performance, Benedetti was more glowingly confident than ever.

The tone from her Stradivarius filled Bruch's rich melodies with genuine passion, adding sparks of playfulness when the mood suited. The hushed opening of the famous adagio was a golden moment, poised and eloquent, with a stillness that seemed to suspend time. She may be building her repertoire slowly at the moment – we've heard her in this piece several times – but with that comes a sense of completeness and assurance.

The only suspicious moments lay at the hands of Czech conductor Jakub Hruša, whose anticipation of Benedetti's interpretational nuances was often slow off the mark, leaving co-ordination with the soloist a little slack.

There were premonitions of this in Cesar Franck's eccentric symphonic poem Le chasseur maudit. The opening lacked tautness and precision, yet when it gathered steam – it's rather like a Wagnerian prequel to John Adams's Short Ride on a Fast Machine – Hruša pulled things together more persuasively, generating a more incisive rapport with the RSNO.

Schumann's Spring Symphony – marking the start of the RSNO's survey of all four Schumann symphonies – met with the same mixed fortunes. Out in the fast lane, Hruša cruised effortlessly and the band responded with single intent. But where the music demanded more subtle gear shifts, this performance lost urgency of direction.