Music review: BBC SSO & Antony Hermus, City Halls, Glasgow

“THIS concert is a bit bananas,” observed BBC SSO violinist Alex Gascoine in his pre-concert interview with conductor Antony Hermus. A blunt assessment, perhaps, but – well, as an orchestra insider, Gascoine would probably know. Most definitely bananas – intentionally so – were the coloratura soprano arias swiped from Ligeti’s opera Le grand macabre and repackaged as Mysteries of the Macabre, a thoroughly entertaining if entirely mystifying (yes, intentionally so) stream of gibberish given a flouncing, startlingly incisive performance by Sara Hershkowitz, brandishing a bucket of KFC and a litre bottle of Irn-Bru. Even more bananas was the decision to preface it with Haydn’s sober Philosopher Symphony, which Hermus delivered with wonderful precision and stylish restraint.