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   Web Issue 3198 July 20 2008   
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Music: RSNO, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
MICHAEL TUMELTY, Music CriticMay 05 2008

It would be fanciful to hope that Nicola Benedetti's superb account of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto on Friday might spearhead an awakening of interest in Poland's most neglected great composer, whose Fourth Symphony and opera King Roger will receive Scottish performances over the next six months or so. If it does happen, Benedetti's championship of the concerto will be a factor in bringing Szymanowski out of the shadows, not least for the clarity of line, texture and sense of progression within the rhapsodic piece that she and Stephane Deneve revealed in their performance with the RSNO.

Benedetti was absolutely on top of the winding, ornamental curve of the long violin melodies, which she articulated precisely, where other violinists who take up the piece tend to slither and swoon. Her mix of tenderness and intensity in some of the most volatile music in the book was alluring, though an extra dash of languor wouldn't have gone astray. Deneve's balancing of the hefty orchestration with the solo line produced a clear, luminous glow from the music, even if his opening speeds were hair-raisingly fast. Altogether, a gleaming and convincing account of an elusive masterpiece.

Otherwise, in the closing concert of the RSNO's season, Deneve was in epic mode. It didn't really come off in the immense breadth he lavished on Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, though it did produce a good old-fashioned juggernaut version of Beethoven Seven, a compound of grinding rhythmic drive and measured speeds in which Deneve took the long view, racking up tremendous tension throughout and a walloping catharsis in the finale.


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