Music review: The SCO, Pekka Kuusisto & Allan Clayton, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Featuring tenor Allan Clayton, this third and final instalment in violin virtuoso Pekka Kuusisto’s mini-residency with the SCO was joyful and unashamedly entertaining, writes David Kettle

The SCO, Pekka Kuusisto & Allan Clayton, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh *****

“‘Follow that,’ they said,” quipped tenor Allan Clayton, rolling his eyes, on stage to sing Britten’s Les illuminations straight after Pekka Kuusisto’s blazing performance of the violin concerto Shrink that his New York mate Nico Muhly had written for him. Clayton was right: it wasn’t an easy performance to follow. This was the last of the Finnish violinist/director’s three concerts with the SCO, and he was clearly going out with a musical firework display: Muhly’s driving rhythms and sonorous jazzy harmonies doffed their caps unapologetically to Glass and Adams, but it was a language all the composer’s own – exuberant, volatile, yet expertly crafted. Kuusisto had suggested the helter-skelter showpiece might be a self-portrait of Muhly’s own lightning-quick imagination, but it felt as much aimed at Kuusisto’s own exhilarating musical personality, with athletic leaps, folk-like rawness and soaring melodies too. A slimmed-down SCO string section provided incisive support, negotiating Muhly’s restless textures with remarkable assurance.

Clayton did, however, follow Kuusisto’s concerto, and delivered a spinetingling account of Britten’s fantastical settings of verse by French wild child Arthur Rimbaud. He simmered with sensuality in Britten’s erotic tributes to the male form, virtually spat out his patter songs, and sang with unwavering commitment and conviction – as well as faultless French. Kuusisto led the SCO strings from the leader’s chair, in bold, forcefully projected playing that shone a bright light on Britten’s orchestral sorcery.

Pekka Kuusisto PIC: Ronald Knapp

The warmth and mutual support between Kuusisto and Clayton had been evident from their opener, three surrealist songs by Muhly for voice and violin, with a luxury drone supplied by the full SCO. They served as a large-scale upbeat, though, to the concert’s most conventional offering, though there were nothing run-of-the-mill about the Haydn ‘London’ Symphony that Kuusisto directed. Boldly coloured, sometimes raucous and with stomping dance rhythms, it was just as joyful and unashamedly entertaining as the rest of the concert’s music.