Drama and excitement as guest conductor takes up the baton at BBC SSO

The Herald Scotland

25-04-2025

City Halls, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
four stars
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra marketed this live broadcast performance on the box office potential of Spanish pianist Javier Perianes playing Mozart's perennially-popular concerto No 17, and there was nothing wrong with that part of the programme, even if did seem a little strange that the soloist was relying on a score for a work he must have played many times.
But for many in the hall, and listening on Radio 3, the real interest lay in the works on either side of the Mozart and in the conductor on the podium. Anja Bihlmaier is Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester and earlier in the day the announcement of the BBC Proms programme had included the news that she will premiere a new electric guitar concerto by Mark Simpson with Scotland's Sean Shibe on July 22 in the Royal Albert Hall.
The work that filled the second half of this concert was also fairly new, the 2016 'symphonic suite' created by Manfred Honeck and Tomas Ille from Richard Strauss's opera Elektra. If the composer himself had crafted such an orchestral concert piece it would surely have sounded much along these lines, incorporating all the most compelling music in the score, culminating in an instrumental performance of the final scene.
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Bihlmaier gloried in the huge forces under her baton but was equally attentive to the moments that featured just front desk strings and wind soloists – much of the delight in this half hour of music came from her precision control of the dynamics. The orchestral Elektra may lack the sense of humour in Strauss's tone poems, but in all other respects can sit alongside them as a repertoire piece.
The conductor began the concert with another new/old work celebrating females from dramatic tragedy. Melanie Bonis was taught by Cesar Franck and her Trois femmes de legende: Salome; Ophelia; The Dream of Cleopatra share elements of their orchestration with Ravel and Debussy. Composed in the first decade of the 20th century, they were only assembled as a suite a decade ago, which the RSNO and Thomas Sondergard played last Spring.
If not quite as epic as the Strauss, it is also assured regular performances by the range of orchestral colour it contains, with terrific opportunities for the wind soloists – and Bihlmaier found all the drama in the lyrically-expressed fate of the Egyptian queen.