Music review: RSNO, Sharon Roffmann & Steven Osborne, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Playing without a conductor for their opening concert of the new season, this was a somewhat uneven performance from the RSNO, writes Ken Walton

RSNO, Sharon Roffmann & Steven Osborne, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ***

The RSNO took something of a risk going conductor-less with their opening programme of 2022. Not because they are incapable, especially with their motivational leader Sharon Roffmann assuming the directorial role; but because success largely depends on the repertoire performed. With this programme some of it worked, some of it didn’t.

David Fennessy’s Hirta Rounds – part of the orchestra’s Scotch Snap series – presented the ideal starter. This is chamber music, scored for 16 string players and written in 2015 for the Munich Chamber Orchestra, its central dynamic reliant on the players’ ability to interact within a score void of time signatures.

Standing in the round, the chemistry was as visible as it was audible. Fennessy’s mystical soundscape, inspired by the island of Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago, evokes a resonant purity fed by subliminal harmonics, criss-crossing oscillations and predominantly whispered dynamics. There was a magical, spectral density in this performance, but not even that countered the eventual frustration in this music of waiting for something to happen which never does.

Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with soloist Steven Osborne ought to have been a guaranteed knockout. It was here, though, that the absence of a conductor proved troublesome. Osborne’s thought-provoking opening statement, teasingly understated, signalled a refreshing and revelatory journey ahead. But there was a sluggishness and untidiness in the orchestra’s response, especially in the outer movements, that had a dragging, anxious effect on the performance. Out of that, however, shone a truly dramatic slow movement, and a gorgeously moody encore from Osborne.

Still on their feet, the RSNO found a new lease of life in Beethoven’s Symphony No 4. Playing now like a well-oiled machine and taking critical leads from Roffmann, they trusted their own instincts to shape a thrusting, interactive and colourful interpretation.

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