BBC SSO & Daniel Lozakovich, Glasgow review: 'a phenomenal talent'
Sweden’s Daniel Lozakovich’s gave a powerful performance in Schumann’s Violin Concerto, but the SSO’s take on Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony was almost derailed by a ringtone, writes David Kettle
For a season opener – let alone one launching 90th anniversary celebrations – this BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra concert felt like an oddly muted affair.
But there were reasons, not all of them under the Orchestra’s control. For a start, the concert opened in a mood of reflection and memorial, with the Scottish premiere of a new work written by chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth as a tribute to former leader Laura Samuel, who died last November aged just 48. Titled for Laura, after Bach, it spun Britten- and Tippett-like textures out of the Gigue from Bach’s E major Partita, recorded by Samuel during her illness, in music that felt more celebratory than mournful, though it had a deep sense of melancholy even among its glistening sounds, dispatched with moving sincerity by Samuel’s colleagues.
More Bach – the sombre, inward-looking Sarabande from the D minor Partita – closed the first half as the encore to young Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich’s powerful, densely argued and (almost) persuasive Schumann Violin Concerto. He’s clearly a phenomenal talent, with plenty to say and the technical agility and musical insights with which to say it, and he played the Concerto with utter conviction and a sense that every note mattered. Even Lozakovich’s vividly characterised, perceptive account struggled to make sense of the Concerto’s wilfulness and weaknesses, however. It’s just the way the piece is.
Rachmaninov’s not often heard Third Symphony made for an intriguing concert closer, and a winning one in Wigglesworth’s brisk, bright, vivid, sometimes deliciously hard-edged account, which miraculously teased apart the different strands of the composer’s rich orchestration while simultaneously blending them beautifully. An incessantly ringing mobile phone, though, almost derailed things completely, going on so long it forced a brief stop in the music to put an end to the noise. Not only a distraction, it also inevitably took the edge off the Symphony’s closing moments – a huge shame, and an even bigger frustration.
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