Music review: RSNO & Thomas Sondergard, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall - 'a stimulating surround-sound coda to the season'
RSNO & Thomas Søndergård, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ****
There was no shortage of spectacle in this season finale by the RSNO. The orchestra, extended to 175 players – among them a thunderous back row of ten timpanists with four additional brass bands placed liberally around the audience balconies – and the 125-strong RSNO Chorus, packed a punch with one single work, Berlioz’s epic showpiece Grande messe des morts.
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Hide AdA Requiem by any other name, it’s tempting to consider it in the same vein as Verdi’s. But this is Berlioz, a unique and utterly eccentric French voice of the revolutionary 19th century, who eschewed preconceptions when it came to orchestration and word setting, creating music that, at its most extreme, smacks of anarchic belligerence.


Conductor Thomas Søndergård seemed to have that in mind as he shaped a performance highlighting the score’s cliff-edge fragility and cautious bombast alongside moments of cosseted warmth and sublime piety. Between the haunting organic intensity of the opening Introit and the deadpan finality of the closing Amen, the road was tantalisingly unpredictable.
The seismic tutti roar of the timpani in Tuba Mirum, the plaintive tenors’ spare conversation in Quid Sum Miser with the cor anglais, the volcanic exhilaration of Rex Tremendae, the gorgeously airy a cappella of Quaerens Me, and the sidestepping rhythms countering the rustic euphoria of the Lacrymosa, all contributed to a fascinating adventure.
Tenor Magnus Walker’s solo appearance in the Sanctus exuded filtered purity, despite entries that fell slightly under pitch. Nor was every single entry attack by the RSNO, augmented by students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, perfectly synchronised. But a powerful big picture served as an illuminating and stimulating surround-sound coda to the season.