5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review: The London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Usher Hall
The 1995 work is a modern showpiece for symphony orchestra, as performances by the BBC SSO and National Youth Orchestra of Scotland have demonstrated, and it was a fine introduction to all the sections of the London Philharmonic here, especially the ensemble sound of the basses and the clarity of the wind soloists.
The rest of the programme was box office gold, Holst's Planet Suite taking up the second half and the large orchestra occupying every square inch of platform in front of the audience-filled choir stalls.
Somewhere offstage the National Youth Choir of Scotland made another memorable contribution to the Festival with the final Neptune movement's ethereal wordless chorus, which now seems redolent of a much healthier 20th century fascination with our Solar System.
Elsewhere in the work, classical allusions emerge as readily as scientific ones, from the martial opening of Mars through the popular hymnic theme of joy-bringer Jupiter to the magical exchanges of Uranus.
All the details of the marvellous orchestration, including a stellar percussion section, two harps and celesta, and rare sounds like that of the bass oboe, were apparent in Gardner's efficient reading, even if it lacked a little in the way of burnished edge.
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The first half performance of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Italian pianist Beatrice Rana was also much less flashy than it is often played, and none the worse for that.
It is a keyboard show-pony's favourite, but Rana was having none of that in a measured, lyrical reading that allowed the orchestra's first oboe and other soloists their place in the spotlight and featured as beautiful an expression of the Andante Cantabile slow variation as one might hope to hear.
The wonder of the work is how the 25 variations flow into one another and from soloist to orchestra and back, so having them enumerated and named in supertitles as well as on the thin free printed programme seemed a pointless distraction.
And projecting the composer's programme note for Forest in the same way during the first viola's opening solo at the concert's start was just plain rude.
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