City Halls, Glasgow
Håkan Hardenberger is top of his field, about as internationally celebrated as it's possible for a classical trumpet soloist to be. Haydn's C major concerto is the repertoire stalwart, with its bouncy finale that anyone who's taken trumpet lessons will have drilled into sobriety. Yet Hardenberger's Haydn was far from bouncy: breathy sound, clunky articulation, entries blurted and often early. He had good reason to be impatient with conductor John Storgårds's sluggish tempos and some uncharacteristically ropey playing from the Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Harrison Birtwistle's Endless Parade was a brief transformation. Hardenberger says he's performed the concerto at least 60 times since it was written for him in 1987, but there was no hint of routine. This was incisive and physical playing, spurts of unabashed showmanship tempered with subdued, atmospheric grumblings. As with much of Birtwistle's music, this is a piece of aural theatre: a carnival makes its way through the tight streets of Lucca, and we're given an account in sound of the various passing floats. A four-note jingle interrupts often and emphatically – maybe one of the floats was keener than most.
Apparently Birtwistle had Stan Kenton in mind when he was writing, and the SSO ensured there was a bit of swing beneath the jumble of images. Endless Parade was commissioned by the grand impresario of 20th-century music, Paul Sacher; in a nice programming link, so was Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. The works share a bullish electricity, but Storgård got little more than tepid Bartók from an orchestra that's capable of proper fire.
Presumably Sibelius's Wood Nymph was chosen as a bit of Scandinavia to honour the Finnish conductor and Swedish soloist; under Storgård's baton, the sprawling tone poem seemed an ill-defined, overwrought slog. Not the SSO's finest hour.