It might be literally appropriate to allocate four stars to Saturday night's RSNO concert, which featured in its second half a powerful performance of Walton's oratorio, Belshazzar's Feast, conducted by Richard Hickox. As overwhelming as the singing of the RSNO Chorus was, work is still needed to harness their power, in terms of security and confidence of tone, as well as absolute homogeneity of an ensemble still prone to raggedy edges and a degree of tentativeness.
That said, the achievement of the chorus under its director Tim Dean was already evident in the dramatic force the singers unleashed, and the sheer quality of singing they produced, for Hickox's incendiary interpretation and a blazing RSNO performance that raised the hairs on the back of the neck.
Unequivocally, however, the orchestra's playing in the first half was a five-star job in every department, transcending even their best performances in recent memory, and quite possibly amounting to one of the supreme RSNO performances of the modern era.
Those who are aware know absolutely that Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem is a masterpiece. It's just not played enough, or with sufficient conviction, to reveal its proper status. Hickox's interpretation cut to the heart of the work in its every dark shadow and grim implication, and the RSNO, with the decisive leadership of guest first violinist Jim Clark, one of the best in the business, played it with unrelenting and aching concentration.
Which leaves just a word for the heart-stopping performance of baritone Roderick Williams, awesome in the Walton, and whose golden voice touched the soul in Mahler's Ruckert Lieder. Singing to cherish on a night to remember.
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