Tam O'Shanter Overture - Malcolm Arnold
Scottish Fantasy - Bruch
Symphony No 3 (Scottish) - Mendelssohn
Malcolm Arnold's Robert Burns-inspired Tam O'Shanter Overture of 1955 afforded the composer an opportunity to let his hair down in the depiction of inebriation, witches and bagpipes. It's an opportunity he exploited with a no-stone-unturned thoroughness in the fullest tradition of Hollywood score kitsch. In Friday's Scottish-themed programme at the NCH, Stephen Barlow led the RTECO through this indulgence in bad taste with a relish that seemed fully in keeping with the composer's intentions.
The skill of Arnold's concoction is not in doubt any more than that of Bruch's Scottish Fantasy. As a showcase for fiddling, the Bruch has a lot to commend it. As a piece of music, rather less. Tasmin Little is a musicianly player, unostentatious, perceptive, agree ably free from personal mannerism. On one level there was nothing to fault in her ever-tasteful handling of the Bruch. But at the end one felt it had needed an injection of ego, of personal perspective, to draw the attention away from the banality of the composer's invention.
Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, by a long distance the finest work on the programme, was delivered after the interval with al fresco directness. The RTECO's lowish ratio of strings to wind made for distinctive and often refreshing balances, and Stephen Barlow captured the spirit of the music with engaging buoyancy.
