'Gloriously sombre'

Leeds Town Hall

Saturday 18th November 2017

"Funeral" music by Mozart and Beethoven bookended this thoughtfully crafted programme given by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Mozart deploys flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and three basset horns to produce the gloriously sombre tones in his Masonic Funeral Music. This beautiful work was played with crystalline clarity by the Glasgow based Orchestra under Ilan Volkov, their former chief conductor.

The music poignantly paved the way for Schumann's "missing" Violin Concerto in D minor. Joseph Joachim, the concerto's dedicatee, so despised the work that he arranged for the manuscript to be locked away before it could be performed in public. Yehudi Menuhin's assessment of what is effectively Schumann's valedictory Opus as "the missing link between the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms" encouraged other renowned soloists to champion the concerto. Russian virtuoso Ilya Gringolts notably meets the enormous technical challenges posed by the seriously ill composer. Gringolts' tonal warmth and his eloquent phrasing could melt the stoniest of hearts in the presence of this music. Schumann's ebbing resources of spiritual energy flow through the score. He reaches the listener and hits the spot where the more famous and showy concertos fail to do so. The meticulous balance of sonorities demonstrated that Gringolts, Volkov and the BBC SSO were as one.

Beethoven's monumental Symphony No 3 (Eroica) occupied the second half. The famous Funeral March is the heart and soul of the work. Volkov and his Orchestra wonderfully conveyed the slow burning intensity of this great Symphony. The conductor releashed high levels of energy in the Scherzo and in the 'Prometheus' variations that form the Finale. Following an inexorable build-up, the brilliance of the climactic prestissimo (very fast) variation provoked a storm of bravos, cheers and foot stamping from an appreciative audience.

Geoffrey Mogridge