With its unprecedented length and heightened sense of drama, Beethoven's Eroica is often considered the first Romantic symphony. Today, the question of whether it sounds like the precursor to the symphonies of Mahler or a continuation of the tradition of Haydn on a grander scale is largely down to the conductor.
Given that he is associated with intensely dramatic performances of large-scale works, Ilan Volkov would seem a likely candidate for the former approach. Yet the chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has the capacity to surprise, as he did with an Eroica that underplayed the massive element of the work. Using a slimmed-down BBCSSO, Volkov delivered an Eroica that was neither a monumental edifice nor a revisionist up-tempo affair, but somewhere in between; it sat well in the City Halls auditorium, where the warmth of the string sound was heard to good advantage without being overpowering.
Lean, stylish and laid-back rather than driven, this wasn't a searingly dramatic interpretation; the sudden contrasts and unexpected accents were emphasised in a way that was elegant rather than shocking. Previously, there had been an even stronger sense of objective coolness in the Sibelius Violin Concerto.
Young Russian violinist Alina Pogostkin (replacing an unwell Ivry Gitlis) won the Sibelius Competition last year, so she clearly knows her way around the concerto. Her opening phrase was calm and beautifully clear in a way that set the tone for the rest of her performance, though there were times when a little more fire would have been welcome.
Programming unusual works alongside familiar repertoire is standard procedure for Volkov, but on this occasion augmenting an already long concert with two short works, Busoni's Berçeuse Elégiaque and Fausto Romitelli's Flowing Down Too Slow, seemed superfluous. While the impression left by Romitelli's otherworldly piece in its first UK performance suggested that it would be worth hearing again, in the context of Eroica it was little more than a canapé before the main event.
