tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post113775293991117180..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on a rollUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1137832028984892882006-01-21T08:27:00.000+00:002006-01-21T08:27:00.000+00:00In today's Guardian Tom Service writes:BBCSSO/Volk...In <A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,11712,1691573,00.html " REL="nofollow">today's Guardian</A> Tom Service writes:<BR/><BR/><B>BBCSSO/Volkov <BR/>4 stars City Halls, Glasgow</B><BR/><BR/>Tom Service <BR/>Monday January 23, 2006<BR/><BR/>A piece that features an "Ensemble of Eternal Sound" sounds like either a new-age indulgence or a prog-rock nightmare. In fact, Jonathan Harvey's Towards a Pure Land - the first of his commissions as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's Composer in Association - was a deeply felt orchestral meditation. The music was as sensuous as it was moving in its world premiere performance with the BBCSSO, conducted by Ilan Volkov.<BR/>Harvey's piece was the perfect way to assess the acoustics of the magnificently revamped City Halls in Glasgow, the BBCSSO's new home and a venue transformed from municipal drabness into a gleaming, modernist auditorium. Hovering weightlessly on the verge of audibility, Towards a Pure Land began with a rustle of strings trills and percussive shimmers. On top of this musical stasis chirruped choruses of birdsong in the woodwind before an explosive dance for full orchestra.<BR/><BR/>Harvey's "pure land" comes from Buddhist philosophy, a "state of mind beyond suffering", but the piece is no mere bland depiction of unalloyed bliss. Instead, the relationship between the Ensemble of Eternal Sound, with its music of still contemplation, and the worldly activity in the rest of the orchestra made a for a dynamic, unpredictable experience. The piece was helped by the marvellous flexibility of the City Halls auditorium, which was able to cope with the extreme quiet of Harvey's score as well as its moments of clattering orchestral brilliance.<BR/><BR/>Volkov's second half was even more of a test for the new hall: the outrageously lavish original version of Stravinsky's Firebird. Volkov gave the ballet a sturdy symphonic sureness, creating a seamless arc from the chromatic gloom of the introduction to the climactic hymn of rejoicing. On this evidence, the City Halls are far and away the best place in Glasgow to hear orchestral music, and among the finest halls anywhere in the country.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.com