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Bruckner’s unfinished Ninth Symphony has become something of a party piece for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in this, the composer’s bicentenary year. This is the third occasion and the third venue in which they’ve played it, which might help to explain why they sound so great in it.
The man on the podium might be a factor, too. Celebrating his 70th birthday with this Edinburgh Festival concert, Donald Runnicles is the orchestra’s conductor emeritus, and he’s always a welcome returnee. Under Runnicles’s baton Bruckner’s movements reveal their treasures slowly but with unarguable certainty, thus making their vast spans even more majestic.
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The orchestra answered all of his decisions with the utmost responsiveness. Small changes drove the music’s massive directional turns, and there was an unarguable majesty to the whole thing, with rich, heaving bass lines underpinning everything, and gleaming brass climaxes crowning the edifice in those grand pillars of Bruckner’s superstructure.
Next to this, songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn couldn’t help but sound slight, for all that they were subtly played, and the mezzo-soprano Annika Schlicht sang with glowing depth. The baritone Thomas Lehman was a little underpowered next to her, but he did a neat donkey impression when required. A Fringe show surely beckons.★★★★✩
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