Classical review: SCO/Colin Currie, City Halls, Glasgow

IT WAS an inspired piece of programming that coupled Stravinsky’s spunky, neoclassical Dumbarton Oaks with the UK premiere of Sally Beamish’s percussion concerto, Dance Variations, forming a lively first half to last night’s SCO concert.

Both hark back to earlier forms of music as inspiration, and both evoke in their own way the spirit of the dance.

The latter influence is quite literal in Beamish’s exquisitely scored concerto – a sequence of linked sections that couple the age-old Seven Deadly Sins with quirky reinterpretations of ancient and modern dance styles, and which came vividly alive in the charismatic hands of Scots percussionist Colin Currie.

Currie’s animated realisation was perceptive and thrilling. From his opening naturalistic conversation with the soft sagging woodwind bird calls, to the growing assertion of the percussion’s role in a darting lightweight saltarello (Avarice), a furtive tango (Envy), the jokey bottle chimes and bloated rumble of drums representing Gluttony, to the sultry swing-time marimba of Lechery, and a parodistic pavan against the indolent background of slithering strings in Sloth, this was a sparkling tour de force.

It was never about mere display, but a genuinely sensitive vehicle for the subtle theatricality of such a pre-eminent artist as Currie.

Joseph Swensen demonstrated as much himself in his conducting of the Stravinsky and in Beethoven’s Symphony No 7, which proved an inspired journey from the super-sensitivity of its opening movements to the power-driven bombast of the finale.

Rating: *****

KEN WALTON