Gabriela Montero’s Latin Concerto

City Halls, Glasgow, 3/10/24

BBCSSO, Elim Chan (conductor), Gabriela Montero (piano)

“Imagine Venezuelan flair and improvised power”. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night season continued with a programme featuring the dazzling virtuosity of Venezuelan pianist and improviser, Gabriela Montero, in a performance of her own Piano Concerto No.1, nicknamed ‘Latin’, under the baton of Hong Kong-born guest conductor, Elim Chan.  The concert opened with Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, a 2014 adaptation for string orchestra of a short 2011 string quartet.  Brahms’ richly-scored poignant farewell to symphonic form, his 1885 Symphony No.4 in E minor, closed the concert.  The concert was introduced by Kate Molleson and broadcast live on Radio 3.  It will remain available on BBC Sounds as a Radio 3 in Concert podcast for another four weeks.  In contrast to last week’s season opener, attendance was woefully sparse, though the enthusiasm of the diminished audience was thankfully palpable.

I first heard Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte in Callander Kirk in the 2022 Summer Tour of the SCO Strings.  Rooted in the classical minuet-and-trio form and inspired by the composer’s reaction to a delicious key change in the minuet-and-trio of Haydn’s Op.77 No.2 String Quartet, it departs quickly into a very different alternative reality sound world, exploiting various other-worldly string effects like artificial harmonics, percussive pizzicato, col legno, glissando and brushing the bow along the strings instead of across.  A truly magical work, with the BBCSSO Strings no less up to all its technical challenges, sympathetically guided by Elim Chan’s vision.  Fleeting moments of minimalism are offset by Grieg-like sweetness and contrasting elements of spooky surrealism. The closing morendo pizzicato chords on Rudi de Groote’s cello were spellbinding. Excellent.

The large orchestra, for which the 2016 ‘Latin’ Concerto is scored, assembled and the statuesque Gabriela Montero, accompanied by the diminutive Elim Chan, came to the stage. A short lyrical meditation for solo piano with harp chords and double bass drone gave way to the ‘Mambo’ first movement, rhythmic and playful, syncopated and hemiolic.  I was reminded of Bernstein’s music for ‘West Side Story’.  After a reprise of the meditation, the Mambo returns with darker elements (reminding me a bit of the ‘Masque’ from Bernstein’s Symphony No.2), and a virtuosic marimba part (played by guest principal Marika Tsuchiya) developing to big finish.  The second movement, a lyrical nocturne with a pacier central section, featured the most deliciously melancholy dialogue between the soloist and Yann Ghiro’s clarinet.  The BBCSSO’s double basses were in their element with the loping slap bass of the central section.  Fabulous.  The solo piano tailed off to close the movement.  The finale, played attacca, was another wild captivating episodic hemiolic dance, with influences discernible from Moncayo and Ginastera, among others.  Marimba, bongos, timpani and the brass let rip, dancing with the soloist.  Thrilling.  Despite the paucity of the audience, the Glasgow applause was fulsome.  Gabriela Montero arrived back with a microphone and said she would improvise on any “well-known” theme suggested by the audience, “maybe something Scottish”?  “I Belong to Glasgow” was yelled from the stalls.  “You have to presume I don’t know that”, she said, “can you sing it for me?”  Principal trumpet Hedley Benson obliged with the first line with glorious vibrato, with the audience joining in softly.  After picking it out a few times to lock it in, she played a delicious rhapsodic improvisation, Schumannesque at first, but also with elements of Brahms, Fauré and even Rachmaninov.  Beautiful.  The audience erupted adoringly.  Glasgow belongs to Gabriela Montero.

The symphonies of Brahms have been part of my life since I was very young, long before realising that there are many who consider Brahms to be grumpy and conservative.  I’ve always been able to lose myself in the ingeniously-wrought development sections of Brahms’ sonata-form movements, none more so than the first two movements of the Fourth Symphony and, though it is probably the gloomiest of the four symphonies, it remains my favourite.  Elim Chan brought a fresh unforced candour and precision to the expression and the orchestra responded with playing that delivered an open texture perfectly matched to the acoustic of their City Halls home, with none of the turgidity that turns many right off Brahms.  The phrasing of the opening breathed naturally and I for one was captivated from the first bar.  I have heard more fire in the exposition, but when it was unleashed in the stormy anguished coda, I realised that this balance made more sense.  The sense of mystery at the end of the development before the recapitulation was the best I’ve heard live. The cellos handsomely repaid Brahms’ trust throughout, but it is in the second movement that their big tune comes, after horns and winds sing a psalm and the strings turn it into a declaration of romantic devotion. Great symphonic tunes often attract bogus lyrics (usually rude), but the words I’ve heard applied to the cello melody are impeccable: “Little boy sits at the foot of the stairs; Christopher Robin is saying his prayers”.  At any rate, it was gorgeous, even with the counterpoint emphasised.  And it’s so good, the violins get to play it too later in the movement.  The Scherzo was faster driven than I am used to and I felt that this made the jollity seem a little forced, rather than just Brahms mischievously letting his hair down.  It was still lovely and the second theme (“All things bright and beautiful”) still smiled.  The mighty Passacaglia finale reasserted the gravitas, with sustained dramatic tension and playing to match.  Matthew Higham’s sobbing flute variation was wonderfully intense. The chorale of three trombones offered gentle consolation.  When the storm returned, the sense of inexorability was built wonderfully, the hope of a ‘happy ending’ was snatched away and the drive to the grim conclusion was magnificent.  A fine reading of Brahms’ angst-ridden masterpiece with top-drawer playing from the orchestra.  Full marks from me.  A real pity that the attendance was so poor.