Music review: Pierre Boulez: A Festival Celebration
Star rating: ****
Venue: Usher Hall
In this tribute, Matthias Pintscher – who, himself, operates a dual existence as composer/conductor – directed the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a programme representative of Boulez and his influences, delivered as the ever-disapproving Frenchman would have approved: with intellectual directness and a keen ear for colour and texture.
The two Boulez works that framed the evening – Don (No 1 of his exquisite Malarmé-inspired Pli selon Pli) and Mémoriale (for flute and small chamber ensemble derived from the so-called “kit” material of …explosante-fix) acted like customised gift wrap for Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces and Debussy’s swirling orchestral masterpiece La Mer.
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Hide AdPintscher’s cool precision elicited completely the right response in both Boulez performances.
The opening work – with re-organised orchestral layout, three harps as a kind of centrifugal force (certainly visibly), enveloped by compulsive, shimmering percussion, and crowned by the lustrous, if economic, presence of soprano Yeree Suh – bore the unpredictable excitability of a celestial meteor shower.
At the other end of the evening, the diminutive scale of Mémoriale, topped by guest principal Charlotte Ashton’s beguiling flute solo, acted as a captivating and calming nightcap to the foregoing oceanic spray of La Mer, a musical picture that Pintscher painted with a powerful concoction of explosive colours and controlled nuance.
He took the same line with the Berg, evoking the out-of-silence/back-to-silence opening movement expertly, though overall it called for more distinctive texturing than Pintscher was willing to allow. Altogether a thoroughly satisfying concert, though, deserving of a bigger audience than it got.