United Kingdom Various: Isata Kanneh-Mason (pianist), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Delyana Lazarova (conductor). City Halls, Glasgow, 27.11.2025. (GT)
Jessie Montgomery – Strum (vers. for string orchestra, 2006, rev. 2012)
Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30
Barber – Medea’s Dance of Vengeance, Op.23a
Debussy – La mer
This evening marked the Glasgow debut of the Bulgarian conductor Delyana Lazarova as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor. Lazarova is the first woman to be appointed to the BBC SSO in this position. Her chosen programme offered an enticing mixture of twentieth-century musical pieces of distinctive styles and influences. A country more associated with a lengthy stream of world-class singers, few Bulgarian conductors have won acclaim on the international concert stage, apart from Emil Tchakarov, who enjoyed great success before his untimely death.
Lazarova’s music education began in Europe’s oldest city, Plovdiv, where she studied violin at the Dobrin Petkov Music School with Violeta Stoyanova. She has an affinity with the Eastern European tradition, particularly in Dvořák, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Bartók. She studied violin at the Jacobs School of Music in Indiana with Mauricio Fuks and conducting with Johannes Schlaefli at the Zurich Hochschule für Musik. Lazarova has repaid her debt to her homeland by recording a CD of Dobrinka Tabakova’s orchestral works.
The opening piece, Strum, by the US composer Jessie Montgomery is adapted from her 2006 piece for a cello quartet, and here was performed in its full version for strings. The opening pizzicato started on the violins and spread across the ensemble in a sequence of plucking evoking American folk ideas, in which were heard layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinatos creating a layer of sound. The piece invokes American dance in a nostalgic narrative before ending in a celebratory finale. This was an innovative work very worthy of hearing.
The highlight of the concert was the performance by the marvellously gifted young Isata Kanneh-Mason – in recent seasons she has been one of music’s rays of light – and here she brought a freshness in expression as if playing Rachmaninov’s music for the first time. One of the aspects of the composer’s finest works is the ability to express natural warmth in the orchestral textures, and here, following the Slavic theme, in the opening Allegro ma non troppo, the orchestra switched from minor to major, creating the effect as if the sun is emerging from behind the clouds. This gave the playing momentum and greater passion, and a sense of playfulness on the keyboard. The secondary theme was accompanied by tantalising exchanges between the piano and orchestra, and Kanneh-Mason’s first cadenza was delightful in its delicacy of articulation.
This vibrance and novelty of expression continued into the theme and variations in the Intermezzo, which were graced by a romanticism enhanced by the soloist’s brilliance in taking a brisk tempo in the style of a scherzo. This led the orchestra into the Finale: Alla breve with a flourish of energetic joy, taking us to joyous fanfares and an exhilarating upbeat rapture of the piano and orchestra in the culmination of this masterpiece. The capacity audience responded with a roar of approval, and many rose to their feet in appreciation of this terrific performance.
Samuel Barber is still little heard in the concert hall, and this selection of a colourfully orchestrated excerpt from the ballet written for Martha Graham in the early post-war period was re-orchestrated by Barber to cause greater effect. The opening was muted with the strings entering into a meditative section embellished by strange solo passages in the orchestra. The xylophone then breaks the mood by tracing Medea’s emotions as she discovers her husband’s betrayal and leading to her subsequent vengeance. This erupts in dissonance and bizarre syncopations revealing hints of modernism before tearing to the finale and closing with a crash from the percussion.
The performance of Debussy’s La mer introduced us to different moods with the strings invoking the sea through steadily evolving imagery of the elements amid shifting harmonies, ostinatos and colourful textures. The opening ‘De l’aube a midi sur la mer’ evoked the rays of dawn through to the sun-ridden midday in shimmering harmonies. In the second movement, ‘Jeux de vagues’, Lazarova handled the diverse changes in mood with great skill, bringing out all the instrumental colours, revealing magical effects, and taking us to the ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’, presenting all the vastness of the sea and its mysterious beauty.
This evening’s programme by Lazarova offered quite diverse tastes and styles. It was an interesting selection, and Lazarova’s conducting methodology ensured the constant attention of the musicians while busily using her baton to effect the most important switches in tempo and dynamics, and her eyes – and slight nods of her shoulders – for emphasis. In the concerto, the collaboration was mostly attained during rehearsal, as there was little interaction between her and the soloist. Certainly, in their 90th anniversary year, the BBC SSO has an exceptionally talented guest conductor in Delyana Lazarova, and the coming months present a colourful mixture of interesting music.
Gregor Tassie