RSNO & Isabelle Faust, Edinburgh review: 'phenomenal'

Isabelle Faust performs with the RSNO | Martin Shields

RSNO & Isabelle Faust, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★

The Nordic Music Days Festival gave the versatile RSNO and conductor Thomas Søndergård the chance to delve into a treasure trove of contemporary works that explored the beguiling landscapes of the far north.

About Light and Lightness, Rune Glerup’s violin concerto written for and performed by the phenomenal Isabelle Faust, vividly captured the natural world. Faust and the string section became birds swooping and skimming over water, while the repetitive pulse of crushed piano notes  – eked out like a dripping tap – evoked the swift that sleeps in the air. Søndergård superbly choreographed the exciting collision of high-speed rhythms and glacial stillness in the final movement.

Bent Sørensen orchestrates like a painter, his musical canvas infused with irradiant tones and textures like the glowing string aura in his wistful Evening Land. The soft barely there strains of leader Maya Iwabuchi’s solo violin and sighing trombones summoned the ghosts of an ever present past in this moving and intimate work.

No one depicts the majesty of nature quite like Sibelius, with Søndergård and the RSNO drawing us into the windswept tundra and glowering mountains that dominate his seventh symphony. But what was the point of having Hildur Elísa Jónsdóttir’s Tacet: Extrinsic alongside? Basically she sat among the orchestra for the duration doing exactly what we, the audience, were doing – listening intently.

This was followed by Aileen Sweeney’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece Glisk (a fleeting glimpse of sunlight through clouds). Just four breathtaking minutes, This short, glittering profusion of brightness edged with Californian minimalism would have been a more apt concert opener than Errollyn Wallen’s disappointingly murky Northern Lights.

The evening was supercharged by the youngsters from the Big Noise Wester Hailes orchestra, side-by-side with the RSNO musicians, who played Joëlle Broad’s Enchanted Carousel and Mission to Mars with such enthusiasm, verve and joyful exuberance.