SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW


 

Edinburgh International Festival 2010 (13) - Stravinsky, Bernstein, Dvořák: Midori (violin), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Donald Runnicles (conductor). Usher Hall, 28.8.2010 (SRT)

 

Stravinsky: Concerto in E flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”

Bernstein: Serenade

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”

 

From the original to the obvious: the New World theme of this year’s festival gets its most famous musical treatment from a conductor who has spent a great deal of his time in that New World. Edinburgh-born Donald Runnicles is just finishing his first year as Chief Conductor of the BBC SSO. It has been a happy and successful year as a partnership, though this evening Runnicles surprised me at where he created the greatest success. So famed as an interpreter of large-scale works (Wagner, Bruckner etc), the finest performance for me this evening was the first one. Stravinsky’s modern take on the concerto grosso, with its miniature band and short running time, bubbled and busied its way along delightfully. The 16 instrumentalists played with transparency, vigour and a good deal of fun, clearly listening to each another and bouncing off one another beautifully. This was really exhilarating to listen to. The Dvořák, on the other hand, was less tight in its opening half: brass ensemble was less than perfect at times, and the slow movement was some way off Largo. By the time of the great engine of the finale, however, things had improved: the orchestral colour was finer and better delineated and all cylinders were firing in time for the coda.

Midori’s first Edinburgh Festival has consisted of a Queen’s Hall recital and a remarkable outing here for Bernstein’s Serenade. Allegedly based on Plato’s Symposium, Bernstein’s suite is a violin concerto in all but name. It has seriousness, fun and astonishing beauty in turn, and Midori showed herself to be an incredible poet of the violin, a ravishing singing tone apparent in even the fast passages. She was meltingly beautiful in the slow fourth movement and found the energy to equal the orchestra in the quicker sections associated with Eryximachus and Socrates. Runnicles’ direction, steady and colourful, was subtle enough to step back and give her the limelight when it was so richly deserved.

Parts of the concert were recorded for future transmission on BBC Radio 3. The Edinburgh International Festival runs until Sunday 5^th September in venues across the city. For full details and to book tickets go to www.eif.co.uk.

 

Simon Thompson

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