Classical reviews: SCO/Ticciati, City Halls, Glasgow

WHEN Mahler conceived Das Lied von der Erde, he pulled together two of the most potent vehicles of musical expression of the 19th century – the symphony and the song cycle.

SCO/Ticciati

City Halls, Glasgow

****

At an hour’s length, his setting of ancient Chinese poetry (taken from Hans Bethge’s German translation) is universal, in both its emotional and physical sense.

Yet, in the version played last night by the SCO – a reduced chamber version by the American conductor and composer Glen Cortese – the emphasis was skewed towards the intimate and personal.

Versions like this, as Schoenberg and his Viennese cronies revealed in so many of their condensed Mahler arrangements, are like taking a microscope to a colossal organism and viewing its minutest elemental constituents.That seemed to be SCO principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s intent, gleaning from this performance a truly hypersensitive impression of the work: one, for instance, in which the euphoric orientalism of Von Der Schönheit lost none of its effusive ardour, but gained a sharp luminosity; and equally one in which the aching simplicity of the gently oscillating thirds’ theme was both innocent and profound.

Of the two soloists, this approach favoured in particular, mezzo soprano Karen Cargill, whose entire performance was molten and radiant, feeding the final spent moments with a spellbound intensity.

Tenor Toby Spence, rather drowned by the band at the opening, warmed as the performance progressed, agile and vibrant in Der Trunkene im Frühling.

The concert opened with Haydn’s Symphony No 60, its fitful eccentricities a perfect preface to the nerve-end Mahler. Ken Walton