Music review: RSNO & Roger Norrington, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Sir Roger Norrington, 85, still finds new ways to look at old music. Some of it not so old, such as the two works here by Debussy written just over a century ago. Nonetheless there are things we do nowadays that weren’t done then, he argues, so why not revisit them with freshly informed thought?

The RSNO

RSNO/Roger Norrington, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall *****



As for his Beethoven, who’d have thought there were fresh avenues left to explore in the Eroica Symphony?


But here we had a mercilessly pared down RSNO, its strings huddled in a seething musical scrum, tightly flanked by animated woodwind and brass up on their feet, a vibrant living organism drawing teenage breath from an old shocker.


Norrington sticks to the letter of the law in Beethoven, particularly the composer’s racy tempo markings. Nothing new in that, but when you combine a genuine fleet-of-foot opening “con brio” and two-in-the-bar allegro of the Marcia funebre with the featherlight but fiery dynamics and effortless textural nuances Norrington prescribed in this dizzily refreshing performance, it felt as if Beethoven’s ink was still wet on the score.


As for Debussy, the conscious absence of vibrato – modish in his day – imbued the Prélude á l’après-midi d’un faune with glassy fascination. In the lesser-known Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, it acted as a steely, sometimes discomforting foil to the flamboyant spontaneity of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s rakish pianism.


Any inconsistency in the music itself was offset by Bavouzet’s zestful Debussy encore, an intoxicating L’isle Joyeuse.