Music review: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Edinburgh International Festival: Let's start with the best bit. The BBC SSO were on fire in Tuesday's rapt performance of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra under Thomas Dausgaard.

Usher Hall

***

It’s a work that responds in uber-exalted musical terms to hardline Nietzschian philosophy, and it was that sublime sense of transportation that thrilled and excited us.

All of Strauss was there: the liberating magnificence of the famous opening; the saturating density of the string writing; exhilarating flights of mischief and ­sparkle; and that crunching tonal dichotomy, leading ultimately to those offset pizzicati and questioning silence. Or so it would have been, but for whooshing of the Usher Hall’s noisy air conditioning.

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The first half revealed a less true connection between Dausgaard and his players. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony opened on a bland plateau and remained there. Nothing quite distinguished it: plain and grey, not always unanimous in attack.

Nor did Schumann’s Piano Concerto feel completely comfortable. Soloist Sergei Babayan, assured as he was, gave the opening movement, in particular, a force-fed rubato that seemed to catch Dausgaard unawares, with consequences for orchestral precision. A note of composure lifted the Andantino; it was but a momentary spark.

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