Review: Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Edinburgh Usher Hall

By SARAH URWIN JONES
Published on Tuesday 7 February 2012 00:00

TASMIN Little has long championed British music, and the Elgar Violin Concerto, which she recorded last year with the RSNO and last Friday’s conductor, Sir Andrew Davis, is something of a calling card.

The work is vast, virtuosic, but its sprawling structure demands rigour and inspiration, and last Friday’s performance fell short on both.

Little’s warm tone and lightning fingers were impressive as ever, but her violin never really soared above the orchestra. The most affecting moments came in the final movement, a rapt contemplation of times past.

A world away, stylistically, the two first-half offerings excavated in turn the literalism and the brilliance of late 19th century romantic writing. Scottish composer William Wallace penned his attractive turn of the century Pelleas et Melisande Suite in the wake of Maeterlinck’s eponymous and hugely influential play. Sweeping and melodramatic, it never quite ravishes, but its innocence and charm were winningly played.

The biggest impact came with Strauss’s effervescent 1889 tone poem, Don Juan, a series of amorous and physical parries lushly described in grotesque wind laughter, lascivious horn blasts and swooning, ecstatic strings. A few moments of imbalance, but the RSNO provided an exhilarating ride into the finale’s hellish depths.

Rating: ***

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