Runnicles Conducts the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony by Debussy, Beethoven, MacMillan, -tól (2016/2016), Karmester Donald Runnicles, City Halls, Glasgow, United Kingdom

James MacMillan dedicated his Violin Concerto to the memory of his mother. But as last season’s acclaimed BBC SSO cycle of MacMillan’s piano concertos showed, there’s more to anything by MacMillan than meets the ear: as one critic put it, this is a work “so full of ideas that you might wonder if he couldn’t have written two concertos”. In the hands of its dedicatee, the great Vadim Repin, it’s an arresting companion-piece for Beethoven’s much-loved (and deceptively relaxed) ‘Pastoral’ symphony, and the quiet revolution of Debussy’s sensuous Prélude; works chosen by Donald Runnicles both to complement, and to strike sparks off, each other.