They say you should never judge a book by its cover. By the same token, you should never judge a musician by their press photos. I hadn’t come across Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović before this Edinburgh concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, aside from his publicity photos featuring piercing eyes and a waist-length mane of jet-black hair. Call me prejudiced or call me stupid, but I’d assumed, no doubt unfairly, that he’d bring dangerous Eastern European vigour to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto that would sound like he was sweeping away the music’s genteel veneer and setting off a bomb beneath the score.
I still thought that when he strode onto the Usher Hall stage in a low cut top and platform shoes, so felt both surprised and a little chastened when he delivered nothing of the kind. Instead this was as demure and graceful a performance of the concerto as you’d ever hope to hear. The violin’s first entry was disarmingly lyrical, understated even, as though the soloist was a shy character only reluctantly taking centre stage, and the whole first movement unfolded slowly, luxuriously and very beautifully.
Is that why I also found it a little disappointing? After a while, the slowness became distracting, particularly in the first movement’s second subject which sounded indulgent and prolonged, wallowing rather than engaging, and his cadenza was articulated with admirable clarity but a strange lack of character. The Canzonetta had more than its fair share of droopy moments, and if Radulović found a touch more vigour in the finale then it still wasn’t especially striking. In short, it was all perfectly lovely, but not much more than that. So my assumptions were all wrong, but I wish I had been taught my lesson via a more gripping performance.
The orchestra sounded great next to him, with cushioning strings against which the solo flute and clarinet lines stood out in brief but cherished beauty. Giedrė Šlekytė, making her debut with the RSNO, conjured up terrific sweep in the big tutti passages, which made me think that the problematic tempo choices in the concerto weren’t hers.
That was reinforced by her superbly judged performance of Mahler’s First Symphony where every decision felt right, and where the orchestra followed her with all the excitement and passion that the Tchaikovsky had lacked. The opening was perfectly controlled, with a sense of mystery, space and light filtering through the atmosphere, before a main Allegro that felt upbeat, youthful and gloriously optimistic. There was heave-ho aplenty in the second movement, before a funeral march where the double bass solo sounded genuinely eerie and which generated a strangeness that radiated throughout the whole orchestra. There was persuasive sway to the klezmer sections, and a gorgeous softness to the violins in the Lindenbaum theme, which was then blown to pieces by the wailing roar that opened the finale. Šlekytė controlled that movement with just the right balance of excitement and anticipation, so that the final peroration seemed to blaze with conviction. This was her first performance with the RSNO, but I hope there are many more to come.
