Review: An evening of guitar mastery with Karen Schuapp

Featuring Karin Schuapp on guitar, and conducted by Alan Buribayev.

This thrilling concert led by Kazakh conductor Alan Buribayev had the fired-up TSO producing some of its best ever playing. Performance quality across the entire orchestra was at a consistently high level in the three programmed works.

The Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor was the stunning opener in this version without the frequently included chorus. This is music of immense colour and barbaric splendour with Buribayev achieving amazingly vivid and intensely wrought textures, wonderfully balanced and detailed. Karin Schaupp is a famously long time exponent of Rodrigo’s lovely Concierto de Aranjuez, having recorded it with the TSO in 2006 with conductor Benjamin Northey.

This rendition, with the guitar discreetly miked, was finely poised with contrasting rhythmic vitality and poetry as required, especially in the slow movement with its improvisatory feel and sublime cor anglais solo from Dinah Woods. The chamber sized accompaniment was beautifully achieved with superb solo work from TSO players and a real feeling of communication with the soloist. Schaupp’s encore was a recently composed Siciliana for solo guitar by Graeme Koehne.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Op. 35 was a simply stunning performance blending expressive brilliance and orchestral virtuosity with the elegance and stylishness of concertmaster Emma McGrath’s gorgeous violin solos. The opening movement had notably propulsive grandeur and the finale built to a spectacular climax at ‘The Shipwreck’. It was clear that the orchestra enjoyed working with conductor Buribayev and, while the whole orchestra merits the highest praise, several players must be mentioned – Andrew Seymour (clarinet), Jane Kircher-Lindner (bassoon), Greg Stephens (horn), Fletcher Cox (trumpet), Katie Zagorski (flute). Jonathan Békés (cello) and the entire percussion section!