THE RSNO's opening Edinburgh concert opened with a tribute to the orchestra's librarian, Myra Mackay, who died suddenly last week. In a touching speech, music director Stéphane Denève expressed his colleagues' sorrow, echoing that musically with a pr
ogramme change to include movements from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite, a favourite of Mackay's.
Given the circumstances, and the RSNO's heartfelt playing, the consequent omission of Wagner's Flying Dutchman overture mattered not, other than robbing the programme of its only reference to a running theme this year – musical depictions of the sea.
But it was a tidal swing that took us into the elusive, brittle, but somewhat mystical soundworld of Szymanowski's Sinfonia Concertante, essentially a piano concerto played on this occasion by the impressive Piotr Anderszewski, whose incisive and decisive approach made much sense of the Polish composer's spicy inventiveness.
The one obstacle to attaining the perfect result was predictable – the stubborn immediacy of the Festival Theatre acoustics, which essentially fry the woodwind and brass tone. True, there were moments where the resulting cut-glass impact actually enhanced the acerbity of the music, but more silken demands could not be met.
And that was what made the big work of the evening – Mahler's Fifth Symphony – frustrating in part. Of all the Mahler symphonies Denève has explored with his orchestra, this performance had the potential to be the most persuasive yet. He struck a delicious balance between impetuosity and solidity in his sequence of tempi, and wove together Mahler's complex tapestry of micro-ensembles with judicious mastery.
But it needed the right setting – Saturday's repeat performance in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall will test this – in order to garner such pristine delights in appropriately expansive wrapping, and to avoid the momentary lapses in energy that crept into an explosive finale.
OMD
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GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL WHO would have thought a couple of erstwhile preppy electro-pop boffins could whip up such a frenzy? Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – a name I shall only be typing out in full once – transformed the normally decorous Concert Hall auditorium into a playground for excitable Old Romantics, poised to cut loose to the synth pop of their youth.
The 1980s duo hit the nostalgia trail last year with a tour which revisited their classic album Architecture & Morality (the one with all the early hits about a 15th-century Catholic martyr). Having dispensed with the chin-stroking appreciation, they have now proceeded to the more comprehensive Greatest Hits tour, meaning everyone could dance as badly as terminally uncool frontman Andy McCluskey to the later throwaway numbers such as Locomotion and Sailing on the Seven Seas and the OMD nerds could revel in an array of lesser numbers, while a trio of circular screens carried images of pressed flowers and power stations – dig that dichotomy.
In almost no time at all, they arrived at the momentous salvo of Souvenir, Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans – a premature peak, as there were plenty more drippy mid-80s synth ballads to wheel out before they closed with their debut single Electricity. Like much of their set, it sounds very quaint in 2008, yet remains an undeniably catchy pop nugget.
HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT
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LIQUID ROOM, EDINBURGH QUESTIONS as to the continuing relevance of Birkenhead indie outfit Half Man Half Biscuit are irrelevant. Any audience member under the age of 25 will be completely nonplussed by their references to the cultural minutiae of the 1980s, their lyrics including nods to such nuggets of nostalgia as Trumpton, Kendo Nagasaki and Claire Rayner.
Judging by the capacity audience, though, if you're a man – or a group of men, more precisely – in your forties and out for some beers, then singer Nigel Blackwell is speaking directly to you. His rumpled features and drawling almost-Scouse accent are reminiscent of Mark E Smith in their absolute opposition to our expectations of a typical pop star's image, and surely only the comedy band name and meticulous cultural specificity have prevented HMHB from attaining the same kind of worldwide underground recognition as Smith's Fall.
In the live setting, their workmanlike post-punk sound isn't particularly polished, and that's exactly as the fans expect. Throbbing basslines and the kind of scratchy guitars New Order left behind with Joy Division are still a feature of All I Want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit, the more recent Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess and the marvellously glum National Shite Day. These songs are cultural time capsules, and a more amusing parody of the 1980s than most punk bands of the day have now become.
