MARTIN HOYLE Death and intimations of mortality dominated Wednesday's prom. The result, far from being depressing, was sombrely exhilarating - for the second, massive item was Mahler's Ninth Symphony, opening with the rhythmic figures referring to the composer's own heart ailment and permeated by awareness of his recently deceased daughter.
The concert opened with Gyorgy Kurtag's Stele, in memory of his teacher. Its 15 minutes offer a test in gradations in dynamics and tone for any orchestra: grief vocalised from anguish to wistful regret and everything in between. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra again proved superbly controlled: no exaggeration either of overblown emotion or stiff upper lip.
That Ilan Volkov has produced a wonderfully drilled body of players was confirmed by the Mahler. Here the temptation is to splurge out in garish colours. It is all too easy to wallow in late-Viennese decadence, neurosis, nostalgia and necrophilia, but Mahler looks forward, and the abyss of the twentieth century's more abrasive excesses seems just around the corner. Volkov kept a firm rein and the emotions were the more powerful for never bursting the banks of musical decorum: refined phrasing, hushed intimacy (not always the first consideration in Mahler) and an awareness of overall form that unfailingly kept the 80-minute work from sprawling.
The BBC SSO have turned into a crack orchestra. They're back down south on August 14 and 16 - the latter programme with a Scottish opener from James MacMillan. But any sneaking London ideas that this orchestra might be best suited to its home product have been brilliantly contradicted by the band's two proms so far this season.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article