★★★★☆
Slanting ruffles, funereal black: the bottom half of Nicola Benedetti’s dress looked like the Tower of Pisa in mourning. Fairly appropriate too, considering the melancholy shadows that shrouded much of what she was playing, Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1.
In terms of sheer technique, I’m not sure if I’ve heard this magnificent work better played. From the sorrowing nocturne through the fiendish cadenza to the hurtling finale, Benedetti’s warmth, polish and laser-like fingering never wobbled. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales under its principal conductor, Thomas Sondergard, backed her up with a glistening array of instrumental colours, none more affecting than the musings of celesta and harp towards the first movement’s close.
Along the way, greater boldness in emotional projection from both parties wouldn’t have gone amiss. The scherzo especially needed more acidity, more bite. The Albert Hall, admittedly, is a difficult beast for any violinist to tame, but Benedetti was always audible, even when a staccato thud from the audience threatened to shatter the intimate quiet of her regular Scottish encore, the original version of Auld Lang Syne. Whatever she plays, Benedetti remains a great communicator.
Beforehand, we heard Shostakovich’s little symphonic poem from 1967, October, a rarely heard offering for the Russian Revolution’s 50th anniversary. The word “dutiful” rushes to mind, although some compensation came from the composer’s craftsmanship and the BBC NOW’s panache in rattling the snare drum, bashing the cymbals and tootling the tunes.
Substance returned in the spellbinding second half, when Sondergard steered his orchestra through the complex mosaic of Sibelius’s Second Symphony with infinite skill and a firm grasp of the music’s structural engineering. Instrumental niceties quickly appeared in the rhythmic precision of the woodwinds, chortling through the opening theme. From then on, one marvel followed another, until the quixotic scherzo eased itself into the finale’s big tune and the symphony’s striving ceased. Brilliant music, this; masterful music-making as well.