Music review: BBC SSO, City Halls, Glasgow
The BBC SSO, City Halls, Glasgow ****
Turnage’s concerto – a largely dance-inspired set of movements – is unexpectedly understated, given Martland’s reputation as a musical rabble-rouser. Yes, there is rumbustious and satirical wit in the Rumba, soloist Colin Currie doing an impressive one-man-band number that juggled bird whistle, car horn and swanee whistle with traditional marimba and Latin jive, and in the spirited Courante and Hornpipe. But overall there is a dark luminescence that shrouds the score, evocatively textured in the opening Cortege, central Pavane and closing Lachrymae.
Currie, a former member of the Steve Martland Band, also played it cool, as if responding to the sardonic touches of Weill and Stravinsky that colour the orchestra’s opening gambit.
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Hide AdStrangely, the actual Stravinsky, with its rude opening, struck me as more in the spirit of Martland. Under the clinically cool baton of Martyn Brabbins, the SSO wind and brass delivered its vying dynamic layers with crisp electricity one minute, languid density the next.
The second half was given over to Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, chilling and unnerving on one level, not least the brutal sweep of the opening movement, quizzically profound on another.
A few uncertainties in wind attack threatened the otherwise grippingly sustained tension. - KEN WALTON