Thursday, November 14, 2024

City Halls, Glasgow

Opening with the thrill of ‘The Chase’, then an intimate ‘Love Song’, and finally the colourful and agile writing that distinguishes ‘At the Drawbridge’, Sibelius’s second set (of two) of Scènes historiques – never a doubt as to the identity of the composer – traversed by the SSO with panache, sensitivity and nimbleness, guided by a notable Sibelian, Sir Mark, who, following the interval, delivered a personal forty-minute selection from Sleeping Beauty – dramatic to delicate, suave to sweeping, and enchanted to energetic, embracing less-familiar numbers as well as timeless ones, such as the Act I ‘Waltz’, all played stylishly; however, and as before, https://www.colinscolumn.com/halle-wagner-barber-tchaikovsky-sir-mark-elder-conducts-prelude-liebestod-tristan-und-isolde-medeas-meditation-and-dance-of-vengeance-and-selections-from-sleeping-beauty-bbc-radi/, a little more would be welcome, including the grand finale. In between, Tom Borrow took on the many challenges of Prokofiev’s four-movement Second Piano Concerto, multifarious in its demands, for the orchestra, too, whether slithery, scintillating, macabre or rebarbative, all preparedly in place, leaving Borrow to climb the outsize first-movement cadenza, nicely seismic and confrontational from him, capped by a powerful orchestral rejoinder; otherwise, the music’s drive, tenderness, and gawkiness, were well within this pianist’s considerable gifts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024mfc

Tom Borrow is the 2023 winner of the Terence Judd-Hallé Award.

BBC Symphony Orchestra live on BBC Radio 3 – Sakari Oramo conducts Sibelius 6, and Tom Borrow plays Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto.

Hallé/Elder; BBC Proms 2011.