Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
This was the first concert in the SCO's Stravinsky series, but the revelation of the night was Robin Ticciati's Tchaikovsky. Hearing him conduct The Nutcracker after Stravinsky's 1936 ballet Jeu de Cartes and one of Haydn's stranger symphonies, attacking it with the same vigour and clarity, gave these sugar plums and dancing mice a whole new character: more outlandish and certainly more interesting than the sickly stereotype. The Waltz of the Flowers was ultra-lush but also swift and muscular, and didn't sound one bit sentimental.
In a recent SCO programme, Ticciati wanted to go straight from Webern into Mozart without a break, so that the audience would hear C major with fresh ears (in the end, the logistics didn't allow it). He seems keen to have us listen differently, but isn't pushy about it. This can also work against him, as it did slightly in this concert's first half. Jeu de Cartes doesn't have the brute energy of Stravinsky's big-hit ballets (Rite of Spring, Petrushka, Firebird) nor the melodic charm of his earlier neoclassical Pulcinella. Its poker plotline can feel non-eventful even with dancers on stage, so it needs vivid treatment to work without them. Here, Ticciati went for robust dynamic contrasts, but kept a steady hand on pace, and was not quite loose enough with the quick-changing rhythms for them to sound really fun.
Likewise Haydn's Symphony No 83, nicknamed "La Poule" for its clucking tune in the first movement, was on the cool side, so that the couple of instances where Ticciati did wind up the tempo sounded forced.
But by The Nutcracker's final Pas de Deux he had relaxed into the sweeping gestures he's capable of, and this was some of the best music we've heard from him yet.
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