BBCSSO, 07/12/2023
Debussy : Images pour orchestre
Shostakovich : Piano Concerto No. 2
Shostakovich : Piano Concerto No. 1
Federico Colli, piano
Matilda Lloyd, trumpet
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins
Tonight's conductor was supposed to be Sir Mark Elder, but Martyn Brabbins was fortuitously on site when Elder declared indisposed. As Brabbins is an old hand with the BBC SSO, having been Associate Principal Conductor for many years, there was no hint of unease in the late change of guiding baton. Given the very late replacement, it says much for the versatility of the orchestra that the Shostakovich, in particular, with its harum-scarum tempi, did not appear to have suffered at all.
The concert began with the second movement of Debussy's orchestral Images, the colourful triptych called Ibéria. Debussy's imagination was probably all the more vivid for barely having set foot in Spain - a matter of a few hours - and Ibéria is a rich and heady concoction that was delivered with style, and a particularly effective transition from the central, nocturnal section into the blaze of light of the fiesta.
The other two movements of Images were played at the start of the second half. Gigues is a difficult piece, it's like a grisaille stained-glass window, myriad nuances of the same tone, poetic but fragile, and I did not feel that Brabbins quite had the measure of it, though the playing was quite eloquent. Rondes de printemps, on the other hand, was little short of magical, excellently paced and beautifully coloured.
The two Shostakovich piano concertos are both radically different, and strangely similar. Both tap into a popular vein at times, both have a lovely, melancholy, slow movement, both have their moments of manic energy. The second concerto, however, follows the conventions of the genre, and plays it safe, where the first - which began life, in Shostakovich's head, as a trumpet concerto - is a rather wilder creation.
The safety of the Second played against it a little. Francesco Colli delivered a very precise and crisp reading, but one which never wholly engaged me. The First, however, brought out more fire in him, sharply delineated attacks, a wide, and widely exploited, dynamic range, and dazzling rapidity in the last movement. If anything, it was trumpet soloist Matilda Lloyd who was being a little too genteel, and lacking that touch of vulgarity Shostakovich asks for at times, but it was a small quibble in an otherwise sizzling performance.
[Next : 8th December]