Music reviews: The RSNO & Jörg Widmann | The BBC SSO & Isata Kanneh-Mason | The SCO & Allan Clayton

With the latest instalments in their digital seasons, Scotland’s three main orchestras offered some fascinating voyages of musical discovery. Reviews by Ken Walton
Isata Kanneh-Mason PIC: Robin ClewleyIsata Kanneh-Mason PIC: Robin Clewley
Isata Kanneh-Mason PIC: Robin Clewley

Few would argue that the current enforced diet of streamed symphonic concerts can ever achieve the same visceral thrill as the live, edge-of-the-seat experience, but a recent batch from the three national orchestras, each in their own way, had something revealing to say. It boiled down to a mix of new discovery and surprise.

Take the star appearance of German clarinettist Jörg Widmann with the RSNO (*****), originally booked as debut guest soloist in a programme to be directed by the RSNO’s principal guest conductor Elim Chan, but who inadvertently became an all-round sensation when Chan had to call off.

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Widmann’s multiple talents as performer, conductor and composer turned this into a one-man extravaganza, one which saw him directing his own solo appearance in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (the one remaining advertised work), adding to that a solo performance of his own Fantasie for solo clarinet, and conducting Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony.

Running through every one of these was Widmann’s quirky individuality. He took flamboyant liberties with the Mozart concerto. Not in a destructive way; ones that boldly challenged Mozart’s Classically-defined proportions and ravishing lyrical paragraphs without contaminating the purity and natural style and momentum of the music.

Simple, economic gestures were enough to elicit an instinctive musical response from the RSNO, which reacted whole-heartedly to Widmann’s thought-provoking eccentricities. Just as they did in the Mendelssohn, giving the symphony’s fundamental Teutonic stoicism a greater sense of the sublime than it often possesses. Revelation from the “Reformation”.

Between these, Widmann’s own Fantasie, a virtuoso showpiece grounded in the edgy surrealism of Commedia dell’Arte, was electrifying.

In another discovery moment, Isata Kanneh-Mason’s concerto debut with the BBC SSO (****), all eyes were on the young British pianist’s ability to distinguish herself from her more famous younger brother, cellist Sheku, or indeed any of the other five siblings emerging from the exceptional Kanneh-Mason household.

She chose Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3, addressing it with clinical alertness and unassuming confidence. Disciplined fingerwork and a gratifying sense of empathy with the SSO ensured its brighter reaches sparkled. There are discoveries she, herself, needs to make in cultivating a more persuasive response to Beethoven’s deeper intentions, but apart from noticeably tiring in the final movement, Kanneh-Mason – as demonstrated by her recent Clara Schumann album – is on an exciting upward journey.

It was the final piece in a programme that opened – given it was Thanksgiving Day – with a somewhat token spread of 20th century American music. Only Julia Perry’s Short Piece for Orchestra stood out as truly characterful and of colourful substance. Written in the 1950s, there is a charismatic wildness about it, fired by edgy rhythms. Conductor Andrew Gourlay, an enthused and secure presence throughout, ensured its merits were exposed.

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The SCO (****), meanwhile, transferred back to Perth Concert Hall for a programme of music by Benjamin Britten and SCO associate composer Anna Clyne that unearthed surprising new thoughts on the former, and found incandescent beauty in the latter.

Clyne’s Within Her Arms, written in 2009 for strings in memory of her late mother, is both a study in contained beauty and a quietly intense outlet for grief. As such, anguished, thick-textured polyphony vies with soft and simple sorrowful gasps. Directed from the leader’s seat by Pekka Kuusisto, its rapt tenderness was magically realised.

Every bit as illuminating, Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings bore fresh fruit in the hands of its soloists, tenor Allan Clayton and former SCO principal horn Alec Franck-Gemmill. It was a sublime partnership, the golden sheen of Clayton’s voice capturing the inner ecstasy of Britten’s exquisite lyrical invention; Frank-Gemmill’s infallible precision like an unearthly counterpoint.

For Kuusisto’s part, there was a dispassionate element at play, unearthing a powerfully uncommon objectivity from the string ensemble that paradoxically intensified the result. If you ever felt the possibilities of this Britten masterpiece had been exhausted, think again.

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