Classical review: Minnesota Orchestra

Published on Thursday 26 August 2010 13:16

THIS was the best orchestral performance of the International Festival so far. And with it came a remarkably slimmed down Osmo Vänskä, who now looks a foot taller than he did when resident in Scotland as chief conductor of the BBC SSO almost a decade ago, and even more animated.

MUSIC

MINNESOTA ORCESTRA

USHER HALL, EDINBURGH

*****

He was back in Scotland with his Minnesota Orchestra, and a programme that might not have seemed out of the ordinary – Elgar's Cello Concerto and Beethoven's Symphony No 7, prefaced by Barber's tone poem Music for a Scene from Shelley. t.

In Barber's score, the passion and angst grew inexorably from its whispered opening on lower strings, to a whopping climax, beyond which a sense of spent ecstasy faded to a magical pianissimo on the horns. Such was the quality of delivery, the whole impression was that of a rich, glowing film score.

But how sensitive was the orchestra's role in the Elgar? Nothing suggested the post-Victorian indulgence we often hear from wallowing old-fashioned accounts. Instead Vnsk underscored cellist Alisa Weilerstein's unfussy interpretation – clean, unforced streams of melody and delicate frissons to match – with suppressed precision and, where it mattered, poignant splashes of colour.

Nothing could have prepared us for his super-refined performance of the Seventh Symphony. Nothing extrovert or garish. This was Beethoven revisited in a way that paired away the excesses of posthumous convention, and saw great music in a fresh and honest light.