RSNO & Ethan Loch, Edinburgh review: 'vital and vivid'
This was a concert that pushed boundaries at every turn, writes David Kettle
RSNO and Ethan Loch, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★
Frankly, it all felt a bit too much. In a good way, that is – in fact, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Friday night performance seemed to push against notions of what a classical concert can even be.
In the case of blind, Blantyre-born pianist Ethan Loch, that was in terms of sheer intensity: his white-hot Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue brimmed over with so much emotion that it virtually forced a wholesale reappraisal of the much-loved piece.
Jazzy grooves, big tunes and witty exchanges with the orchestra were all present and correct, but Loch seemed so deeply immersed in the music – jiving along on his piano stool when not playing, and adding a tasteful dollop of his own improvisation in carefully judged moments – that he offered no option but to listen deep, feel and respond. The RSNO players under Music Director Thomas Søndergård were just as vital and vivid, with a beautifully slinky opening wail from principal clarinettist Timothy Orpen.
And in the case of the evening’s post-interval opera, it was in terms of sheer scale. Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges got a nimble and effective semi-staging from director Roxana Cole that perched its dozens of singers on a makeshift stage in the Usher Hall’s choir seats, balancing innocence and charm with more troubling resonances in its fable of a brat who gets his comeuppance when everything he’s abused in his house and garden turns on him.
It zipped along in brilliant colours under Søndergård’s perceptive conducting, and mezzo Anna Stéphany was equally vibrant in the central role, supported by a huge cast drawn from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland: among many memorable contributions, Zachary Smith’s minimalist frog dance and Anna Puch’s fiery vocal pyrotechnics stood out.
Søndergård had kicked the evening off with more magic, in an atmospheric account of Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. But by the lovingly sculpted counterpoint of Ravel’s closing paean to compassion, the magic had come from the performance itself. An overwhelming evening.
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