Music review: BBC SSO & Annelien Van Wauwe, City Halls, Glasgow

Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe was on energised form for the world premiere of a yoga-inspired concerto, writes Ken Walton
Annelien Van WauweAnnelien Van Wauwe
Annelien Van Wauwe

BBC SSO & Annelien Van Wauwe, City Halls, Glasgow ****

Sandwiched between a sea of Debussy and Chausson in this maritime-weighted BBC SSO programme was a brand new concerto that belonged to a more earthly stratum. This was Sutra, for basset clarinet, orchestra and electronics, by the Flemish composer Wim Henderickx. As the title suggests, it takes its inspiration from yogic philosophy.

That was the wish of its dedicatee, Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe, herself an avid practitioner of the discipline, who premiered the concerto on Thursday, broadcast live on Radio 3, and coinciding with the release this weekend of its commercial recording.

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Even if yoga’s not your thing, there was no mistaking the mystical, meditative quality of Sutra, its four interlinked movements encased in a sound world that is inwardly seductive and outwardly ethereal. Henderickx calls on the players to vocalise, which adds an alluring ritualism to the overall experience.

Van Wauwe’s performance was thoughtful and quietly ravishing, the use of the mellower basset horn possibly instrumental in subduing her solo presence at times, yet in the third movement, a sidestepping frenzied scherzo, the awakening from the hypnotic inertia of the surrounding movements revealed a vital, energised side to the former BBC New Generation Artist.

Conductor Martyn Brabbins found endless potential in Henderickx’s score, from its subliminal live textures to their magical integration with its spectral electronic backdrop. Orchestral colour was also a winning factor in the French music that dominated the rest of the concert.

The SSO was joined by mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly in Chausson’s rapturous Poème de l”amour et de la mer, exquisitely sung against the high voltage, Wagnerian-scale orchestration. Debussy’s symphonic seascape, La mer, heaved and sighed as the finale to a concert that had opened somewhat inconsequentially with the same composer’s Brigadoon-esque Marche écossaise.

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