Gerhardt and Wigglesworth triumph in Unsuk Chin and Bruckner with the BBC SSO

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra opened their second Festival appearance with Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, written for Alban Gerhardt. The orchestra and soloist premiered it at the BBC Proms in 2009, and Gerhardt has played it 40 times since. It is a big piece, four movements playing for 30 minutes. Chin explains that her work is "about the competitive tension between the soloist and the orchestra, where the orchestra responds…in an antagonistic way". She adds that "one could even speak of a 'psychological warfare' between soloist and orchestra". The solo part deploys "special playing techniques and call for unusual timbres, including noises and rasping sounds".

There is a large orchestra, the Boosey & Hawkes website even specifying ten double basses each with five strings – six such instruments formed the bass section here. The "warfare" the composer speaks of can seem unequal when the soloist is on a platform with so many "opponents", but Gerhardt was quite combative enough to break a string in the finale. His intonation and tone were impeccable throughout a very busy solo part, perhaps containing more notes than any other (depending on how many notes you allocate to the many glissandi). Such playing, if it could not silence the orchestra, did reduce it later to frustrated violent cross-accents. And as in classical concerti, a superb soloist emerged as the hero.

Not that long ago, Bruckner conducting seemed a specialism, confined to a few Austro-German artists from Nikisch to Wand, devoted to overcoming resistance to the composer’s greatness. Now persuasive Bruckner performances are everywhere, especially in this anniversary year, as musicians see though the exaggerated reverence once afforded these works. Ryan Wigglesworth’s direction of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony had even seen past the notion that profundity in Bruckner requires very slow tempi. This 55-minute performance took a long view over the whole musical landscape, and always with a sense of a narrative unfolding at a pace dictated only by the material.

Such naturalness is born of a trust between players and conductor, and Wigglesworth’s large clear beat inspires such trust, for the players seemed to respond well to it, not least in such crucial matters as timing the exact moment when a climax bursts forth. In this small hall some early fortissimi sounded coarse, but this was corrected later, achieving good balance between powerful affirmations and lyrical relaxations.

The great slow movement was a cortège of moving solemnity. This symphony is not one of those with textual matters to solve, except once. The slow movement’s climax might, or might not, require a cymbal clash. I confess to personal disappointment when none came, being an unrepentant cymbal-basher here. Even perusing the percussion section, I hoped those brazen implements might have been lying just out of sight. But no, here we had the purist option, and a peak of such power as to need no such vulgar adornment. In the ensuing lament, the golden, grieving tone of the Wagner tubas sounded as if the Master of Bayreuth had only just left us.

The Scherzo featured joyful playing from the first trumpet, alert and bright-toned. From the insistent driving strings at the start, the orchestra built up an impressive corporate rhythm, with a consoling trio. The Finale, as is common in Bruckner outside the Fifth and Eighth Symphonies, operates (until its coda) at a lower emotional temperature than much of the preceding music. Yet Wigglesworth made a virtue of this, with no attempt to force the music to sound more apocalyptic than it is, but rather treated it as a satisfying homecoming after a very exciting journey.

Roy’s accommodation was funded by Britten Pears Arts.