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Robin McEwan tells KEN WALTON why an unperformed 1950s concerto by Ian Whyte was worth resurrecting for a BBC SSO world premiere nearly 70 years on 

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is celebrating its nonagenarian landmark with an official 90th Anniversary concert in December. But there’s a small part of this week’s regular Thursday Series programme (20 Nov) that celebrates a conductor and composer whose lengthy affiliation with the orchestra from its outset influenced more than most the shaping of the band we know today.

Ian Whyte was the BBC’s head of music in Scotland when the then BBC Scottish Orchestra was established in 1935, shifting to become its principal conductor from 1945 until his premature death, aged 58, in 1960. While the Scottish airwaves were awash with his compositions and arrangements throughout that epochal relationship, one piece that never saw the light of day was his Violin Concerto, written sometime in the 1950s for his friend, the Austrian-born virtuoso Max Rostal.

Seventy years on, and thanks to three decades of investigative effort by Paisley-born composer, arranger, conductor and musicologist Robin McEwan, that concerto will finally receive its world premiere by the orchestra Whyte helped create, featuring British violinist Stephanie Gonley as soloist and Martyn Brabbins as conductor.

The very existence of the piece was first brought to McEwan’s attention by the composer’s daughter-in-law, violinist Nan Whyte. “I was conducting a National Youth String Orchestra of Scotland (NYSOS) course in 1993, she was coaching the violins, and during a chat over some wine the conversation turned to Ian Whyte and the impact he had on the mid-20th century Scottish music scene, either through his compositions or his championing of such key symphonic composers as Sibelius,” McEwan recalls.

“My ears pricked up when she told me of a violin concerto that had never been performed. Max Rostal, who had taught Nan, had apparently played it through privately with the composer, but that was as far as things had gone. She was really keen for something to be done to finally get it performed.” At the time, McEwan was busily engaged as assistant music director with Phantom of the Opera in London, but his curiosity for the piece lingered, moving him eventually to visit the Scottish Music Archive in Glasgow and examine the manuscripts.

What he discovered was tantalisingly incomplete. “The full handwritten score was just about there, but lacking some critical information, such as a title page, detailed metronome indications of the tempi, even a clue to the date of composition,” he explains. More detailed examination revealed notes that were obscured by blotches, and what seemed like obvious omissions from the timpani part. Coupled with discrepancies between that score and Whyte’s own “sketchy” piano reduction, McEwan saw before him a daunting but worthwhile challenge.

Over the years, professional and personal constraints prevented him from allocating serious and sustained time to advancing the project. “But then came Covid and a space in my life that made that possible,” he says. 

“I started looking more deeply into the whole piece and began to appreciate Whyte’s real craft as a composer. It seemed, above all, to be very much of its time and reflective of the his particular musical passions. You sense, for instance, that same northern, Scandinavian ruggedness you find in Sibelius. Echoes of Richard Strauss and the violin concertos of Korngold and Waxman point to a lingering nostalgic Romanticism. Whyte was certainly not aligned to the 1950s European avant-garde camp of Schoenberg, Webern, Messiaen and Stockhausen,” McEwan argues.

He describes a gloominess that enshrouds the opening Allegro commodo, an intense inner struggle that lifts miraculously after a long cadenza, “like the sun illuminating a freshly cleared landscape”. After a lightly orchestrated Intermezzo, the vigorous Finale, fuelled by a spirited strathspey and reel, steers the concerto to its conclusion.

Completing an edition fit for performance was one thing, finding an orchestra wiling to take it on was quite another. The obvious first port of call was the BBC SSO, not least as Whyte’s orchestra was approaching such a significant birthday. “It took perseverance to get even a response, but with the help of Simon Webb [formerly Director of Manchester’s BBC Philharmonic, now Head of BBC Orchestras and Choirs], things finally fell into place,” explains Sheffield-based McEwan.” The resulting world premiere is in good musical company, prefaced by the work that rocketed Sir James MacMillan to national fame in 1990, The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, and followed by Rachmaninov’s ravishing Second Symphony. 

McEwan is delighted that Martyn Brabbins took such an interest in conducting the concerto. “Martyn immediately thought it was worth doing,” he recalls. And was there any advice McEwan could pass on to soloist Stephanie Gonley [best known in Scotland as co-leader of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra] that might enrich her understanding of the piece? “I just wanted to talk to her about the playing style of Max Rostal, particularly that intense rubato, the flexibility and musicianship you don’t always get with today’s players.” 

The violinist who planted the seed for completing the work in McEwan’s mind all those years ago, Nan Whyte, would have understood that connection first hand. She died in 1995.  

Does McEwan himself have any idea why the concerto was never properly completed and performed? “I think it was a combination of it being written in a hurry at a time when the composer was facing imminent death, and also that it was composed in a style that would have gone quickly out of fashion.” 

Well, fashions come and go, and as the BBC SSO celebrates its landmark birthday, it’s nothing less than fitting that we should hear for the first time a major work by the man who shaped its distinctive identity.

The BBC SSO premiere Ian Whyte’s Violin Concerto in the City Halls Glasgow on Thu 20 Nov. Full information at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcsso