Music review: BBC SSO & Thomas Dausgaard
The BBC SSO ended its first season under new music director Thomas Dausgaard with a symphonic litmus test. Mahler's Seventh Symphony is the composer's most challenging and troublesome, but equally his most modern and radical. It divided opinion when it was unleashed in 1908. Schoenberg loved every minute. The Mahler-loving theorist and composer, Theodor Adorno, noted 'disproportion between the splendid exterior and the meagre content of the whole'.
BBC SSO & Thomas Dausgaard ***
City Halls, Glasgow
A century on, performances can still be hit or miss, but there have been plenty of examples over the years – both live and on CD – to prove the difficulties are surmountable. For me, Thursday’s performance in Glasgow resurrected Adorno’s questions rather than endorsed Schoenberg’s infatuation. The devil was in the lack of detail.