Classical review: BBC SSO / Donald Runnicles - Glasgow City Halls

Each of the three works featured in the first half of last night’s concert cast a notable shadow on the main event – a performance of Brahms’ Symphony No 1.

The most overtly reflective was Detlev Glanert’s Brahms-Fantasie, a BBC commission receiving its world premiere. Remarkably, Glanert managed to work some truly unusual harmonic effects – muted organ-like strings, overlaid brass sounding like tam tams – into an unmistakably Brahmsian mould. It was a beguiling result.

Biography alone makes it easy to join the dots between Brahms 1 and Schumann’s Symphony No 4. In this context, however, the Schumann functioned as an instructive insight into Runnicles’ own gift for interpreting this music with which he is so closely associated.

That left only Brahms, in his Alto Rhapsody, to comment on himself. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, assisted by the men of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, gave a stunningly mature account of the oppressive arias, managing to convey the pleading desperation in the work without ever tipping over into the realms of melodrama.

It was exactly this intensity of emotion which played out in the opening movement of the First Symphony. In the second and third movements, Glanert’s presence could be felt. And, in the final movement, Schumann’s spectre was never far.

The BBC SSO will perform the two Brahms works in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on Sunday.

Rating: ****