Classical review: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Published on Saturday 23 May 2009 01:03

**** CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

THE BBC SSO ended its Glasgow season with a programme that superseded its modest expectations. Franck's D Minor Symphony I can take or leave; Ravel's Mother Goose Suite is a gem, but we do hear it rather a lot. This left Barber's brilliantly inspired Violin Concerto as the main attraction. It didn't disappoint.

But neither did the other two works, which conductor Carlo Rizzi showed at their best. The delicacies of the Ravel were dreamlike, a veritable bedtime story unfolding in whispered tones, with magical moments of scintillating colour and an overriding poetic balance.

Contrast that with the industrial architecture of Franck's Symphony, whose elemental themes, together with their obsessive presence, can so easily turn into a musical equivalent of Chinese water torture. But in careful hands – such as Rizzi's – this nuts-and-bolts construction can be impressive. In this instance, the conductor engineered Franck's organ-like sonorities with utter belief in their explosive, emotive power.

The Barber concerto is a work that combines fresh thought with an underlying late-Romantic spirit. But the big surprise on Thursday was American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, whose solo performance marked her out as a foremost interpreter of its inordinate energy and beauty.

The finale exploded into a foot-stamping send-off, such was her physical exuberance in the dazzling moto perpetuo. Rizzi and the SSO played their part with equal flair, but why Somewhere over the Rainbow as an unaccompanied, unadorned encore? A strange choice, although a lovely moment nonetheless.KENNETH WALTON