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.

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.