Beauty in the unexpected at RSNO’s Perth performance

It had to happen one day. A performance of Beethoven’s violin concerto that didn’t send my pulse racing and a work by John Adams that I found quite appealing. Still that’s the beauty of live performance – the unexpected often happens, and it certainly did on Thursday night with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Perth Concert Hall.

Adams’ The Chairman Dances is taken from his opera Nixon In China and perhaps because he didn’t have to pour his accustomed minimalism and atonalism into one short work, we benefited from 12 or so minutes that were an enjoyable yet intriguing trip into the composer’s mindset. A strong rhythmic pulse dominated proceedings with a central melody that soared high.

As for the Beethoven, it was one of life’s little anomalies.

James Ehnes’s performance was clinically perfect and I could have no complaint about his technical competence. The first movement cadenza and anything else Beethoven threw his way was testament to that. But a lack of emotion failed to light that touch paper of satisfaction I usually attribute to this fantastic work.

Despite this, there was nothing in Ehnes’s performance or that of the superb RSNO to knock this concerto off the top of classical music’s finest concerti.

But even an old stick-in-the-mud like me couldn’t help but be swept away in the cornucopia of brilliance that emanated from the orchestra, under Andrew Gardner’s direction, through Sibelius’s second symphony. This was magnificent, with a build-up of tension in the second movement that was a delight.

Then came a lightning Scherzo and wind-only trio that simply added to the overall sense of satisfaction. The finale was typical heroic Sibelius, full of national pride and patriotic fervour.