VoxCarnyx

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

“All aboard the good ship Harmony”, hollered a screen-projected Rosalind Sydney above the lunchtime bustle of an Usher Hall full of primary school kids, calling them to attention. But it was when the actor bounded on to the stage to live present Sounds of the Deep: A Musical Adventure, joining a nautically-costumed RSNO and its eager Engagement Conductor Ellie Slorach (aka Captain Nautilus), that the young audience sprang fully to life and the atmosphere crackled.

This was the penultimate performance of the orchestra’s recent Scotland-wide children’s show – Aberdeen was the last port of call on Thursday taking the tour’s aggregate audience to around 8000 – in which the youngsters were whisked off on an imaginary sea adventure, written and conceived by the presenter, to seek lost treasure at the bottom of the ocean where lay the shipwrecked Eliza Jane. “That ship was launched in the 1800s in Port Glasgow”, Sydney informed us, missing the obvious opportunity for a potential gag about it being years late for delivery.

But this was exclusively for kids, so political one-liners would have washed over their heads. What did hit home was Sydney’s effervescent personality, the animated screened images and a mapping of selected classical hits to illustrate the journey. These ranged from Malcolm Arnold’s The Padstow Lifeboat, with its belligerent off-key ship’s horn, to other sundry illuminative works including Britten’s turbulent Storm music from the Peter Grimes Sea Interludes, Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, Rossini’s William Tell overture (much bouncing on seats here) and a grand finale of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring RSNO pianist Lynda Cochrane. Lesser-known scores by Anna Clyne, Jon Hargreaves and Dame Ethel Smyth – The Boatswain’s Mate – completed the mix.

With Slorach in on the spoken presentation – she and Sydney effected a slick double act – you’d have thought she might have added some useful narrative on the actual music, the outcome instead being that the extracts came and went with anonymous haste, notwithstanding their snappy delivery. There was a sense in the screen images, too, of arbitrary convenience – occasional stills like inert foils to more active scenes or animation. Consequently serious points about the need to protect the ocean were not quite as potent as they might have been.

That said, the target audience took the event to their hearts, physically excited by a midway call for a Mexican wave extending from the stalls to the Gods, visibly consumed by an hour-long show pitched well within their concentration limits, and which, most importantly, introduced them to the sound of live orchestral music set in a context that stimulated their awareness and appreciation. 

Ken Walton