Music review: The SCO, Robin Ticciati, Christian Tetzlaff & Tanya Tetzlaff
SCO, Robin Ticciati, Christian Tetzlaff (violin) & Tanya Tetzlaff (cello) *****
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Before the interval, Ticciati had shown the same clarity and detail in Brahms’s Double Concerto – to such uncanny transparency that he even made the richness of brother-and-sister Christian and Tanya Tetzlaff’s playing seem on the thick side. They gave an astonishing performance, nonetheless – gruff when it needed to be, vulnerable too, with natural, unforced communication between them, honing in on the Concerto’s singular mix of joy and tragedy. They blazed through a fiery encore, too, of a movement from Kodály’s Duo, just as exuberant and ebullient as could be hoped.
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Hide AdTicciati set the tone in his mischievously playful opener, the Beethoven-inspired Con brio by contemporary German composer Jörg Widmann, which felt almost like a concerto for SCO timpanist Matthew Hardy, hard at work across all parts of his instruments – skins, rims, bodies, pedals and more. It was a gloriously madcap start to a thrillingly fresh, big-hearted concert.