Music review: SCO, Andrew Manze, Sarah Fox

“And now you’re going to hear why it’s not played very often.” Conductor Andrew Manze had his tongue firmly in his cheek in his less than auspicious introduction to the SCO’s concert opener, the brooding 1944 Passacaille by Swiss composer Frank Martin. But Manze needn’t have worried: in his carefully judged performance, the piece was a thing of dark beauty, its dense harmonies and interweaving lines brought vividly alive by the SCO strings on radiant form.