Page 592 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

plentiful breathing space in a piece that lives by its spontaneous gestures, teasing hiatuses and
poetic flavourings.

Between the playful charm of the opening movement and easeful bliss of the finale, the
scherzo bristled with folk-like devilment (guest leader Roberto Ruisi’s tantalising violin
solos) while the adagio’s ultimate transcendence becalmed its anguished undercurrents.
Soprano Elizabeth Watts’ emergence in the final movement possessed that magical childlike
fusion of fear and innocence. Most of all, there was penetrating clarity throughout this
performance, the SSO sensitive to the subtleties and hitting the climaxes with sparkling elan.

We could have done with more of that in Judith Weir’s Forest, which she describes as “a
modern tone poem” characterised by ever-shifting moods and colours. While the former were
explicit in Wigglesworth’s free-flowing vision, there was something indistinct about the
textural detail, even in this hall’s crystalline acoustics, a clear sense that keener shading
between instrumental colourings might have sharpened the presentation. Was the simple
Brittenesque opening not an obvious clue?

There were frustrating tendencies, too, in soloist Daniel Pioro’s account of Britten’s pre-
World War II Violin Concerto. The positivity in his performance was for the most part
stimulating, particularly in the blustery Scherzo, but where Pioro’s playing strayed into more
roughshod territory the true spirit of the piece – even its underlying whiffs of foreboding –
seemed to evaporate.

Thursday’s second SSO concert was altogether more consistent, featuring two brilliantly
contrasted works: Unsuk Chin’s electrifying concerto followed by the towering grandeur of
Bruckner’s Symphony No 7.

Central to the Chin was soloist Alban Gerhardt, whose performance was a triumph of the
seemingly impossible. This went way beyond mere virtuosity. Gerhardt’s gymnastic
fingering, his precision tuning even where the South Korean composer prescribes notes off
the diatonic grid, the sheer explosive depth of his tone production, all contributed to a
mesmerising display of exceptional musicianship.

Even when he burst a string mid-concerto there was no let-up. Gerhardt snatched SSO
principal cello Rudi de Groote’s cello, setting off a chain reaction of instrument exchanges
among the section before the orchestra picked up again from where it left off. Far from
killing the enjoyment, this moment of danger simply raised the entertainment stakes in a
performance excitable for its organic inevitability, charismatic delivery and breathtaking
showmanship.

The Bruckner proved the perfect foil, a symphony that Wigglesworth and his orchestra
performed several weeks ago in Scotland, but which here, in the lively Snape acoustics,
seemed so much riper, more purposefully driven, more wholesome and convincing in its
reasoning. The strings possessed a ravishing fullness, the wind and brass equal in richness.

It was forceful without the bombast, a feast of meaty colours and powerful emotion, a
monstrous but stimulating edifice. Stepping out into the Suffolk countryside in the dimming