BBC SSO, Anja Bihlmaier & Javier Perianes, Glasgow review: 'some performance'

BBC SSO, Anja Bihlmaier & Javier Perianes, City Halls, Glasgow ★★★★

Four formidable women strode through the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s sometimes overwhelmingly powerful concert – well, five, if you also include conductor Anja Bihlmaier (and you really should), who was a fastidious but compelling presence throughout the evening’s three eclectic offerings.

First came a parade of Salome, Ophelia and Cleopatra, courtesy of three short pieces – collected together as Trois femmes de légende – by French composer Mel Bonis. There was more than a hint of Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov to Bonis’s exotic evocations which flowed freely through moods and textures, but the BBC SSO gave a nimble, perceptive account, with Bihlmaier thoroughly alert to the composer’s restless swerves of direction and richly conceived musical imagery.

Javier Perianes

The evening’s true star, however, was Elektra, as portrayed in Richard Strauss’s most shockingly modernistic opera, which was itself transformed into an “symphonic suite” (really a massive symphonic poem) by conductor Manfred Honeck and composer Tomáš Ille. Cramming Strauss’s orchestral excess into a relentless 35 minutes was a hair-raising prospect, but Bihlmaier tackled the direction with a cool head. Her gleaming clarity and cleanness, however, allowed the music to radiate its incendiary power with searing heat.

Seldom can quite so many musicians have been squeezed onto the City Halls stage, and seldom can the venue have shaken with quite as much sheer sound from an orchestra – there were even a few rare moments when Bihlmaier allowed her elegantly sculpted soundscapes to crack open, revealing the seething brutality beneath. It was quite some performance, as deftly paced as it was dramatically dispatched, and it showed the BBCSSO more than up for the challenge.

It also threatened to somewhat overshadow the concert’s centrepiece, a gracefully poetic account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 from Javier Perianes, all restraint, gentle sparkle and rippling elegance, though with no shortage of emotional depth. Maybe you don’t always need to shout loud to be heard.