The Scotsman 8th November 2000
Britten Cello Symphony
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Hall, Glasgow
THIS programme, last Saturday, contained a triptych of musical landscapes. Northern latitudes were wonderfully evoked in Sibelius’s Tapiola, which was vibrant and entirely unpastoral. We heard boundless expanses of forest and lake, with snow disturbed by capricious winds blown up by the malign god Tapio.
Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony also proved to be more muscular than we knew and displayed a huge range of deep colours. The city emerged at first from Turner-like twilight mists, to which it eventually returned after a lively panorama of daytime activity. The orchestral playing was of great refinement.
The Symphony for Cello and Orchestra surveys Britten’s mental landscape. It had the concentrated musical thought of Tapiola without the pictorialism of the other symphony. Compelling. Julian Lloyd Webber’s mastery of the solo part extended beyond eloquent tone to a higher expressiveness as he integrated his voice within the larger choir. This was also an achievement of conductor Osmo Vänskä.
Stuart Campbell
