RSNO & Nemanja Radulović, Edinburgh review: 'heart-stoppingly beautiful'
This was a concert of two very different halves, writes David Kettle
RSNO, Giedrė Šlekytė & Nemanja Radulović, Usher Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★
Two mighty, meaty musical warhorses shared the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s rewarding programme under demonstrative Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Šlekytė. Indeed, she and soloist Nemanja Radulović shared a wonderfully close connection in the first of them, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, which received a sometimes heartstoppingly beautiful account from the Serbian violinist, its opening tender and vulnerable, its finale exuberant, confident and deeply joyful.
He had a crystal-clear tone, nipping nimbly through Tchaikovsky’s virtuoso passages with immaculate articulation, but also digging deep into the Concerto’s sometimes overshared emotions with moving sincerity. He’s a global fiddle superstar, and his flowing black robes and platform boots hardly did anything to diminish his rock-star image, but there was a complete absence of swagger.
More striking was Radulović’s musical modesty: in the rare moments when Tchaikovsky gave him a break, he’d turn his back on the audience to focus instead on what his orchestral colleagues were contributing, clearly absorbed in the music. And those RSNO contributions were graceful and vivid, elegantly shaped by Šlekytė and full of character. It was a gloriously captivating, deeply moving performance, one that took joy in sharing Tchaikovsky’s heart-on-sleeve passion and pathos with listeners.
There was more elegant shaping after the interval in Šlekytė’s densely argued, crisply articulated Mahler First Symphony, but while she had a firm grasp on the piece’s immense architecture and paced its ebbs and flows convincingly, it was a bit too well-behaved to fully convey the composer’s epic sense of drama.
The second movement stomped its way nicely through its hefty dance rhythms, and the macabre “Frère Jacques” funeral procession of the third movement was surprisingly light-footed, but awestruck wonder was in somewhat short supply in the Symphony’s atmospheric opening, and its galvanic finale felt a little underpowered. It was an enjoyably compelling account all the same, even if it felt polite and measured rather than all-consuming and elemental.
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