Music

Proms in the Park

Glasgow Green

Keith Bruce

four stars

OF the line-up of talented female guest soloists the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra had booked for its contribution to the nationwide event that is now The Last Night of the Proms, there could be no argument who had the repertoire that best suited the occasion of an outdoor event on a relatively balmy evening. Soprano Elizabeth Watts lit up Glasgow Green from her first appearance, absolutely in character as Rosina from The Barber of Seville singing Una Voce Poco Fa. “Feisty”, the word the evening’s presenter Jamie MacDougall used to describe the Rossini character, absolutely nailed it, but Watts was also able to turn on a dime and give Dvorak’s Song to the Moon, from Rusalka, and Lehar’s Meine Lippen, from Giuditta, precisely the tone of powerful performance they both required as well.

Which is not to say that her sisters on stage failed to acquit themselves well. Hannah Rarity, BBC Radio Scotland’s current Young Traditional Musician of the Year brought her own Where Are You and Davy Steele’s Rose O’Summerlee to the Party and the Ayoub Sisters opened their first half set with a reading of Misirlou that would surely have astonished the doyen of surf guitar Dick Dale, who had the first pop hit with the tune.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor used the occasion to preview a forthcoming album that reworks her back catalogue with a symphony orchestra, and that may turn out to be a bit of a mixed bag on this evidence. Arrangements of Take Me Home, and especially the Barry White strings on Murder on the Dancefloor made up for an opening take on her breakthrough hit – Spiller’s Groovejet – that didn’t really succeed.

It was left to the solo oboe and clarinet voices within the group of senior students from Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise project in Stirling’s Raploch to represent the male gender during their arrangement of Scottish tunes, with Lewis Sinclair making an auspicious contribution on the eve of his departure to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Over the rest of the evening, both MacDougall and the orchestra, on everything from Wagner to John Williams, were as dependably excellent as ever, under the baton of Stephen Bell, and crucially the format of the evening, reaching different audiences on two TV networks and two radio stations, now works a treat, with the nod to the songs of the First World War an effective anniversary addition to the usual Last Night pomp.