Music review: BBC SSO, City Halls, Glasgow

BBC SSO, City Halls, Glasgow ****

It opened with a brand new work by Scots-based David Fennessey, whose The Ground combines the hyperactive rhythmic pounding of the foetal heart, a rigid structure based on mensural canon, and the recorded voice of Scots piper Robert Urquhart Brown as bookends.

There is something hypnotically powerful in its central idea, a virile Braveheart-style counterpoint of drums from which emerges a rugged orchestral wash, defined by that pervasive prenatal rhythm. It’s like a stirring musical undercurrent to a heroic movie, but as a concert piece, even in this thrusting performance by the SSO under Thomas Dausgaard, its potential is underdeveloped. Per Nørgård’s Symphony No 7 is the complete opposite, frenzied stylistic crosscurrents encompassing everything from complex avant-garde to teasing touches of jazz and rock, even a sentimental hint of tango.

But it was Simon Steen-Andersen’s Piano Concerto that brought the house down – or rather the grand piano featured crashing to the floor on giant screen. It’s a virtual double concerto, pianist Nicholas Hodges doubling on piano and synthesiser against the visual trick of projecting him opposite as a second pianist in quasi-cartoon style. The music is crazy, gymnastic, defined by a belligerent eccentricity, not to be taken seriously as the screened piano’s synchronised ragtime dance suggested. Tom and Jerry for the 21st century. - Ken Walton