RSNO, John Wilson & Stephen Hough, Edinburgh review: 'thrills and revelations'
Sir Stephen Hough gave a glittering performance of Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto with the RSNO under John Wilson, writes David Kettle
RSNO, John Wilson & Stephen Hough, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★
There was a danger the musical bookends in the RSNO’s demanding but magnificently rewarding concert might end up as charming evocations of time and place, but not much else. Certainly, there’s much to captivate and entertain in Ravel’s sumptuous portrait of 19th-century Vienna, La valse, and Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony. But visiting conductor John Wilson delved deep into both pieces, finding an uncertainty and darkness that dispelled any sense of superficial portrait painting.
Indeed, his La valse felt daring as an opener, expanding from palpitating double bass heartbeats to roar and swell in delirious but tightly controlled fury. If it passed through charm and schmaltz, it was on a journey to deranged self-destruction. Seldom can the RSNO strings have sounded so honeyed, the woodwind so vociferous. With the clockwork precision of his baton flicks, Wilson was both commanding and demanding, thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.
Wilson was just as deeply absorbed in the Vaughan Williams London Symphony that closed the concert, but here – despite a sparkling, spectral scherzo and hefty power in the first movement’s images of the waking city – it was the visionary introspection that really impressed, from a majestic slow movement to a finale of Mahlerian grandeur and spiritual insight.
In between, Sir Stephen Hough provided a glittering, sometimes overwhelmingly powerful performance of Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto, almost threatening to overshadow the orchestra with his thunderous playing at times, yet retreating into crystalline poetry at others. It was clearly a work Hough felt deeply: even among Rachmaninov’s densest, most pyrotechnic keyboard writing, the pianist found direction and meaning that made every note essential. With the RSNO performing on incisive, energetic form, it was a concert of thrills and revelations.
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