Over the years a lack of imagination in concert programming has often frustrated me: overture, concerto and symphony, or the combination of a Mozart concerto before a symphony by either Bruckner or Mahler. Ahead of this concert given by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth, I kept wondering whether there might have been a mistake in the sequencing. But no, that was not the case, so full marks to whoever hit upon the idea of scheduling three works in their chronological order and without adhering to a predictable format. A trio of works united by something else too, and not just their proximity in composition: quiet endings. Giving time for reflection and inward thoughts.
The symphony came first: this was Brahms’ Third. It got off to a rather limp start and never fully recovered, as though the autumnal glow with which it is often suffused had already been affected by the deathly pallor of the evening’s final work. The essential problem with which all conductors have to battle is this: how to retain the spaciousness without the music ever losing momentum. It is partly a question of respecting the tempi. All four movements carry different markings, yet in Wigglesworth’s reading the basic pulse was virtually uniform. He aimed for clarity, having dropped the back desks of the strings and using antiphonal violins, paying particular attention to the woodwind rather than exploring inner string detail. But the metronomic beat didn’t help, not allayed by a repeated pulling back of the dynamics, and when the occasional surges came they never had an organic feel about them.
The sandwich was no overture but a substantial work in its own right. Here Wigglesworth was on surer ground. The Grave section with which Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht opens set an appropriately sombre mood, the moments of foreboding giving way to the woman’s agitation as she contemplates her personal dilemma. Wigglesworth did not indulge the sultry eroticism or allow the chromatic harmonics to stoke up the emotional temperature unduly. Particularly noteworthy was his ear for sonority with welcome colour in the detail: the furiously plucked notes of the violins, the metallic glint of the violas, the razor-sharp edge of the double basses, and in the concluding Adagio section the glissando effects for strings sounding like gently falling beads, the rocking figuration for second violins like a gentle lullaby.
And so finally to the star of the evening. Not in a concerto but a song-cycle. Alice Coote seems made for Mahler, and in this performance of Kindertotenlieder she was at the top of her game. What she did so convincingly was to bring alive both the grief and the drama inherent in these five songs, all in the minor mode save for the final stanza of In diesem Wetter where the shift to the major key introduces a feeling of transcendence. Coote has strong operatic credentials and the richness of her mezzo voice was deployed to full effect in maintaining the narrative line, every movement of her head and upper body signifying emphasis. This was already manifest in the attention she paid to key words in the first song, “die Sonne” and “hell” benefiting from her superb diction, the voice opening out glowingly for “Heil sei dem Freudenlicht”.
In the final song the full orchestra plays an important role in recreating the rushing and raging of the inclement weather. Wigglesworth provided a sympathetic accompaniment throughout the cycle, making the gurgling woodwind sound like cackling demons rampaging through the landscape. And at the very end there was stillness. As in Hamlet, the rest is silence.
