Capaldi given hero’s welcome after swapping gigs in bars for arenas
Lewis Capaldi
SSE Hydro, Glasgow Stacey Mullen
****
SCOTLAND’S man of the moment Lewis Capaldi was given a hero’s welcome at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow. Casually strolling on stage to perform hit Grace, the singer sounded soulful despite his relentless touring schedule.
Showing off his knack for comedy, the star delivered the one-liners as well as the hits during the sold-out set. He said: “Glasgow! It’s good to be home.”
That greeting sent his fans into hysterics who were happy to have their man home as they lapped up Forever,
Don’t Get Me Wrong and Maybe.
Hold Me While You Wait was a highlight, allowing Capaldi to show his vulnerable side, while the song that first put him in the spotlight, Bruises, was a moment to remember.
The 23-year-old from Bathgate has created a formula that has allowed him to become an unlikely pop icon. Beneath the swagger and banter, however, lies a singer who has raw talent and a voice that sounds so pure in a live setting.
That has carried him from playing to a crowd of 250 at Glasgow’s 13th Note to the 14-000 plus capacity Hydro in just three years.
Fade and Before
You Go finished the set beautifully before the finale of Someone You Love.
BBC SSO/ Wigglesworth
City Halls, Glasgow Keith Bruce
****
WHEN pianist Lauren Zhang won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2018, it was very much a local victory in Symphony Hall, Birmingham, the city to which her family had moved from the US eight years previously.
Then, she played Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 2 with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Mark Wigglesworth, who also conducted the BBC SSO for her Scottish orchestral debut concert on Thursday evening.
Although Prokofiev, the anniversary of whose death in 1953 fell that very day, was represented in the programme, it was by his rarely-heard last Seventh Symphony, while Zhang chose the fiendishly difficult Piano Concerto No 3 of Sergei Rachmaninov.
Not that its challenges were in any way apparent in the 18-year-old’s performance, which had a maturity and composure well beyond her years.
Structurally it was very well paced from the start, with no histrionics in the first movement cadenza, and a beautifully measured account of the more emotional slow movement.
Although it was doubtless better balanced for the live broadcast on Radio 3, in the hall Wigglesworth seemed less responsive to her approach than he might have been, with details of Rachmaninov’s orchestration over-loud early in the work.
Zhang had things rather more her own way in the Adagio, while the cinematic sweep of the Finale (akin to that of the symphony earlier) combined the talents on stage to best advantage, before the soloist showed the more introspective side of her musical personality with an encore Beethoven sonata movement.
There is a playfulness about Prokofiev’s “symphony for children” that belies the reality of the Stalinist era of its composition, but in its second and fourth movements there is no denying the voice of this master of orchestral colour is the same as the composer of that masterwork for young people, Peter And The Wolf.
While Wigglesworth seemed a little plodding at times, the slow movement had real depth of feeling, particularly in the passage that features oboe and cor anglais with the second violins and violas.
The programme opened with Alissa Firsova picturesque and atmospheric evocation of the turbulent relationship between Alma Mahler and the artist Oscar Kokoschka, Die Windsbraut, a marvellous work-out for every member of the large orchestra.