@ City Halls, Glasgow: 24 March 2011

On paper this BBC SSO concert looked like it was trying hard to please as many people as possible: an early Sibelius tone poem, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of 1937, Haydn’s ever-popular Trumpet Concerto and the joker in the pack – Harrison Birtwistle’s Endless Parade for trumpet and string orchestra, composed for the evening’s soloist, Håken Hardenberger, in 1987. It was a risky strategy that paid off handsomely.

Hardenberger proved his mettle here in a mellow, soft-grained performance of the Haydn – like a musical version of dairy milk chocolate. The Birtwistle, brash, angular, occasionally very high and very loud, and featuring some delightfully vulgar, fruity low notes, showed the soloist in total command.
Conductor John Storgårds began the concert with a Sibelius rarity, The Wood Nymph, all fluttering strings and Finlandia-esque brass, with a final intense section that nearly outstayed its welcome. In the Bartok, it was the creepy, sinuous music of the first movement (did Bernard Herrmann listen to this when composing part of his score for Psycho?) and dark, cave-like depths of the third, complete with ‘warping’ timpani and ‘dripping’ xylophone, that made the deepest impression. The other, more rhythmic, movements seemed too slow and four-square, losing any forward momentum and coming across as rather sedate and po-faced.