The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra brought a concert of two distinct halves to Perth Concert Hall, familiar Vaughan Williams and Mendelssohn pieces contrasting alongside new music. Sir James MacMillan’s Cumnock Tryst Festival in Ayrshire nurtures and encourages new composers. Ayrshire is steeped in the coal industry – MacMillan’s grandfather was an Ayrshire miner (and a euphonium player) – so a welcome new miniature from Michael Murray preceded MacMillan’s virtuosic showpiece Concerto for Orchestra “Ghosts”.
Vaughan Williams wrote a suite of music to be used in a performance of Aristophanes comedy The Wasps, its Overture now a popular work with its signature buzzy introduction, developing folk themes and expansive memorable tunes. MacMillan led the players briskly, the rattle from horns adding menace to the initial swarming strings. While the big tunes blew the cobwebs away, the quieter lyrical passages were characterful with the sweet oboe, harp and soft horns providing colour. Vaughan Williams loved the thrill of an orchestra at full tilt. Here the purposeful marching cellos and basses heralded a roundup of the themes in a splendid finish.
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor is among the best known violin concertos, yet this performance by the young Swedish player Ava Bahari, making her first visit to Scotland, shed interesting light on the work. Bahari’s 1829 Pressenda has a sweet tone, but at times lacked the volume needed to cut through the orchestra and give the work virtuosic sparkle. This slightly more introverted polite approach allowed the music more space, Bahari’s lively beginning and fearsome runs contrasting with dreamy passages where she floated off high notes as gossamer threads. MacMillan’s economic conducting balanced his players carefully, everything in step with the soloist for the first movement coda. Bahari gave a lovely understated Andante, occasionally drifting slightly, but exploring the movement as if discovering it anew. A crisp Allegro saw players and soloist in pinpoint timing, some of Bahari’s detail lost in the exuberance, but this was a thoughtfully musical performance as was her encore, where Bahari made Bach’s Gavotte dance delightfully.
Dominating Ayrshire’s rural landscape, the enormous A-Frame at the site of the Barony Colliery serves as a reminder of the importance of coal to the area and a memorial to those who died in a pit accident in 1962. Barony was a training mine, the A-Frame housing the winch wheels which took cages of men deep underground as well as hoisting the black rocks to the surface. Michael Murray is an Ayrshire composer mentored by MacMillan, his gentle miniature Visions of the A-Frame a poetic creation in a post-industrial county. MacMillan conjured arm and hand sculptures, fingertips fluttering as the strings formed a soft soundscape of glissandi and harmonics before trumpets and horns sounded mournfully, woodwinds taking over, a solo flute tailing off spiritually into the ether.
MacMillan’s Concerto for Orchestra, “Ghosts” was commissioned by the LSO to welcome Sir Antonio Pappano’s first season as Chief Conductor. Receiving its Scottish premiere, it is a terrific showpiece where the orchestral players are the virtuosi. The work explodes into life with huge jazzy brass and punchy clarinets in a high energy helter-skelter, the music becoming a stream of ideas from fragments gathered. A feature was the highlighting of duets and trios within the piece, a ghostly Beethoven quote from celesta, violin and cello, but unusual colours emerged elsewhere in the slower central section. The excitement of ferocious writing, pounding rhythms and nasal brass fanfares was enormously enjoyable.
