Less is more. The truth underlying that paradox could so easily be applied to In the Belly of the Beast, a dramatic presentation by the Dunedin Consort (in collaboration with Mahogany Opera and Hera) that pulls together three Cantates Bibliques by the French Baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, lasts around an hour, and employs merely two singers and three instrumentalists. Friday’s Glasgow performance was the penultimate in a tour that in recent weeks has taken in Edinburgh’s Assembly Roxy, the Aldeburgh Festival and Spitalfied Music Festival, ending last Saturday in Whitehaven.
A common thread are the Old Testament biblical heroes featured respectively in the three cantatas, each thrown into crisis in response to their relationships with God: Adam’s guilty disobedience; Jonah’s rebellious flight to sea; Jephthah’s foolish bargaining of his daughter’s life. And of course the music: three evocative cantatas by a composer who was exceptional for her time – the first woman composer to be performed at the Paris Opera and active during the late reign of Louis XIV.
Where Friday’s performance especially succeeded was in revealing the wealth of imagery and emotion contained in De la Guerre’s music, especially with such minimal forces. It said much, too, of the three musicians – Liam Byrne (musical director and viola da gamba), Eric Thomas (theorbo) and Alice Earll (violin) – that they could collectively unleash an expressive range far greater than the visible sum of their parts.
In that sense they were more than simply an effective engine room for a drama played out with sharp minimalist focus by sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Mariana Rodrigues, under the economic stage direction of Jennifer Fletcher. Sampson played a solo multi-character role in Adam, the highpoint of which was the hero’s expressive and expansive final aria acknowledging life’s brevity. At this point, and with Sampson’s soulful clarity, the exhilaration effected by De la Guerre’s evocative music made its mark.
Rodrigues’ take on Jonah offered an appropriately stormier appeal, a shriller, more animated delivery in tune with the maritime imagery, but nonetheless capable of darker reflection. Where the two sopranos came together in the opening duet to Jephthah – a moment of great rejoicing before the realisation of Jephthah’s promise to sacrifice his daughter in return for victory in battle – this production swung into overdrive. The vocal interaction was electrifying.
As a theatrical spectacle – aided by Ingrid Hu’s designs with lighting and projection by Ben Moon – simplicity and practicality were to the fore. Nothing much physically happened, but nor in the end did it need to. As ever with Dunedin, the performances were stylish and exceptional. Mention, too, is owed to Toria Banks, whose slick translations offered contemporary poetic relevance to the texts without devaluing a single note of De la Guerre’s exquisite music.
Saturday was Rasumovsky Day at the 21st East Neuk Festival. In three concerts, spread three hours apart over two venues, each of Beethoven’s three middle period Op 59 Quartets – a groundbreaking collection commissioned by the violin-playing Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Rasumovsky – was rolled out by three successive ensembles.
That each quartet had its unique proponent was itself thrilling enough. The cliff-edge lunchtime volatility of Spain’s Cuarteto Quiroga in Op 59 No 1, answered by the mid-afternoon meaty intensity of the American Calidore Quartet in No 2, then took early evening flight with the virtuosic joie de vivre of Swedish-Norwegian string quartet Opus13.
Furthermore, each Rasumovsky was partnered by a non-Beethoven work intended to illuminate the contextual response, which the elemental theatrics of Spain’s short-lived Beethoven contemporary Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga’s Quartet No 3, the dichotomy of intellectual constructivism and expressive fluidity of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Arietta (UK premiere) and the heated, personalised Romanticism of Wilhelm Stenhammar’s A minor Quartet Op 25 respectively achieved.
Throw all that together and the result was an invigorating, at times intoxicating, complexity of stimuli that succeed superbly in attaining its goal, which was to reaffirm the extraordinary innovative advances Beethoven achieved between the masterful apprenticeship of his first Op 18 quartets (published 1801) and the assured and expansive inventiveness unveiled seven years later with the publishing of the Rasumovskys.
In Kilrenny Church, with Arriaga’s E flat Quartet trumpeting an opening theme brazenly reminiscent of Beethoven’s Op 18 No 1 (a performance frustratingly paused midway due to unseen disruption in the church’s rear balcony), the Cuarteto Quiroga proved themselves the perfect fit for the opening F major Rasumovsky. There’s an element of danger in their demeanour, a degree of raw imperfection – almost deliberately so in some aspects of tuning – that is magically offset by a single-minded togetherness. Such conflict lent a decisive edge to the performance, the rigour of Beethoven’s opening movement deliciously countered by suave Slavonic asides, the nimbleness of the Scherzo tamed by the broad lyrical sweep of the Adagio, the final Allegro brusque and resolute.
The action then moved to Crail Church, where the Calidore Quartet made the most of the E minor Rasumovsky’s darker hues. The fragmented rhetoric of the opening, gradually mustering an organic flow, elicited meaty ensemble playing from the Americans, a homogeneity recast as devotional calm in the sublime Molto Adagio. They were mesmerising in the off-kilter rhythms of the Scherzo with its pugnacious Russian references, imbuing the final Presto with all the jauntiness it calls for.
In advance of that, and introduced by the composer himself with the reassurance that “my piece isn’t scary!”, Turnage’s Arietta (an ENF co-commission) opens in the same hymn-like vein as the aforementioned Molto Adagio. It is, appropriately, a homage to Beethoven, the theme of its variations being a literal inversion of the Arietta used by Beethoven in his last Piano Sonata, Op 111. Its gaunt reverence, its gathering warmth, and those hints of neo-classicism coloured by spectral links to the past, gave purpose to its presence in the programme.
The same venue, Crail Church, later welcomed the ebullient Opus13 to round off Saturday’s musical triptych. It took a moment or two for Stenhammar’s substantial A minor Quartet to truly gather momentum, but when it did the performance matured to reveal a lusty allegiance to Brahms and Dvorak, even modal echoes of Ravel and nods to Sibelius. It was hard to ignore the slow movement theme’s unmistakable similarity to “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, but there was much to enjoy in textures that ranged from emulating the whisper of a consort of viols to full-blown passion, and an ending that brimmed with mercurial whimsy.
Then to the last Rasumovsky, and a performance that had us clinging to the edge of our seats. It opened with bristling resolve, struck a graceful balletic note in the Andante con moto, before viewing the unruffled Minuet as an understated springboard to the final fugue, a hair-raising sprint to an explosive conclusion. The audience reacted instinctively, baying for more and receiving it in the form of a simple Swedish folk tune.
There was an unmistakable buzz to the whole day that was hard to ignore. Chamber music’s central canon has long been a factor in defining the East Neuk Festival. But this package, in particular the thought given to cross-referenced programming and comparative selection of artists, had something very special and enlightening to offer.
A concert in this year’s East Neuk Festival celebrates the work of Crail’s forgotten composer, writes Keith Bruce.
It is perhaps surprising that it has taken the East Neuk Festival, headquartered in the picturesque fishing village of Crail for over two decades, this long to celebrate the composer who was born there in 1710.
Local journalist Tom Davison has, however, done his memory – and the festival – proud with a new book, Thank you for the Musick: The Life and Times of James Oswald (The Hardie Press, £15), which is launched by the author on Thursday (July 2) at a concert featuring his music by harpist Karen Marchalsay (pictured) with fiddler Kathryn Nicholl and singer Chris Miles.
Oswald is far from unknown – he is included in the Grove Dictionary of Music and in John Purser’s definitive work on Scotland’s music, and his works have been recorded by Concerto Caledonia amongst others – but he is curiously uncelebrated, especially in his homeland.
His story is certainly a remarkable one. From lowly beginnings, and through troubled times, he made his name firstly in Edinburgh and then in London, and died at 59 as a composer to the Royal court and master of Knebworth in Hertfordshire, a venue more associated with summer concerts by the behemoths of rock’n’roll in recent years.
Davison packs a great deal into his 178-page biography of Oswald, and although he is fond of modestly limiting the scope of his book, and what is beyond it, it is hard to see what could have been added, or what is missed out.
On the music itself he defers to those of greater expertise, but encompasses the full range of opinion over the centuries before coming down firmly on the positive side of the argument. Just as convincingly, and probably of more interest to the general reader, he conjures up a picture of the era, the complexities of its politics and treacherous religious differences, and the fluidity of the class structure at the time, that is as compellingly readable as it is thoroughly researched.
Chapter 15, provocatively titled “Scotophobia”, should be prescribed reading for anyone interested in contemporary politics north of the border. Davison is less impressed than many by 18th century Whig parliamentarian John Wilkes, for example, but concedes his “sharp wit and neat turn of phrase”. Those qualities often distinguish Davison’s own writing, enlivening what could easily have been a dull history lesson.
His book is never that, chiefly because the reflections of our own time are too obvious to ignore. So it is a paradox that it is probably the crucial differences between then and now that account for James Oswald’s neglect.
Although he was a clearly a very original and ground-breaking musician, he worked in an era when originality was less prized, including by himself. His chief interest was in publication rather than copyright and intellectual property, so he was careless of attribution and cavalier with pseudonyms.
Davison takes a chapter to consider the possibility that Oswald composed “God Save The King”, a melody that would surely guarantee his immortality, and wisely concludes that, while the argument is strong, there is no way anyone will ever know one way or the other.
Those “definite maybes” (as one Knebworth headliner might say), all accumulate to create what is surely the fullest picture of The Life and Times of James Oswald that can be painted. With so few hard facts about the composer’s life to go on, Davison’s depth of research and stylish writing contrive to make a convincing character of a major figure and remarkable talent in the history of Scottish music.
Karen Marshalsay’s Looking for Oswald is at Crail Community Centre at 1.45pm on Thursday July 2 as part of the East Neuk Festival, which runs July 1 to 5. Tom Davison’s Thank you for the Musick: The Life and Times of James Oswald is published by The Hardie Press at £15.
What better way to whet the appetite for next season than to sign off with a blistering finale to the current one. If that was in the minds of the RSNO players on Saturday – and it certainly sounded like it – then hopes should be high for drawing in the crowds in future. And what a crowd it was. Hardly an empty seat remained in the 2000-capacity Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the offshoot to that being the sizzling atmosphere beforehand in the foyers and bars. Atmosphere is everything.
The concert itself was a classy affair, slickly presented, in which the picturesque theatre of Mendelssohn, sophisticated couthiness of MacMillan and epic universality of Beethoven were warmly personalised at the start by deserved recognition of RSNO violinist Nigel Mason, playing in his last concert after a record 47 years with the orchestra.
In one of the most erudite and entertaining concert introductions I’ve heard from the RSNO, principal oboist Adrian Wilson – besides linking the infinite mathematical permutations of a pack of playing cards to the spontaneous uniqueness of the concert experience – reflected on Nigel’s amiability, dedication and professionalism. A genuinely appreciative reaction from the capacity audience, and a later surprise encore (“O my luve is like a red, red rose”) sung to him by mezzo soprano Karen Cargill, said everything and more.
As for the main programme, this was also an evening that cemented the real worth of principal guest conductor Patrick Hahn. From the moment he set the Mendelssohn in motion you could sense an intoxicating combination of composure and insight. He coaxed delicious textures, filigree detail and the music’s heated swells with judicious calm, yet by force of character coloured its unpredictable waters with persuasive, exhilarating drama.
He was equally attuned to the gossamer delicacies of James MacMillan’s Three Scottish Songs, a compilation setting of words by William Soutar which the composer packaged and arranged for chamber orchestra in 2022. Featuring the strings, harp and percussion, alongside soloist Karen Cargill, the focus is very much on the latter. Cargill captured the melodies’ alluring simplicity, counterpointed by a beguiling, feathery confection of string textures, which Hahn honed to perfection. The mastery of the writing lies in its minimal precision: the naked intimacy of Scots Song (the Tryst melody that has recurred as a cipher throughout MacMillan’s canon); the growing tensions and horror of Ballad and The Children. Against the prevailing quiet, MacMillan’s use of percussion proved economic but alarming.
The climax of the evening was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and a performance that fully recognised its sublime magnitude and rhetoric. Singing from memory, the RSNO Chorus projected magnificently in the finale’s choral setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Every line was distinct, every expressive manoeuvre homogeneously convincing, coupled with orchestral playing that rooted out every detailed nuance, and a thrilling vocal quartet (Eleanor Dennis, Karen Cargill, Joshua Ellicott and Andrew Hamilton) capable of holding its own against the massed forces.
Hahn’s no-nonsense practicality was once again the defining element in reaching that point. His journey from the self-contained potency of the opening movement, through the irrepressible sparkle of the Scherzo and languishing lyricism of the Adagio was one of incessant discovery, superbly controlled yet motivated by penetrating emotional instinct. Beyond that, the crowing impact of that final sing was inevitable.
Ken Walton
(Picture of Patrick Hahn in rehearsal by RSNO/Clara Cowen)
With the 50th St Magnus Festival set to kick into action, director Alasdair Nicolson tells Ken Walton what it means to be ‘custodian’ of this iconic event
Personally, the news that Orkney is about to celebrate the 50th annual St Magnus Festival is troubling. I vividly remember the inaugural Festival, not because I was there or knew exactly what was going on, but because in 1977 a buzz had spread among the composition students – no doubt encouraged by their visiting professor Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – at the Manchester music college I was attending. I sensed there was something dynamic happening back in northernmost Scotland. Just how significant it was remained a mystery until I traveled to later festivals as a cub critic. But has it really been half a century?
The early years were, of course, defined by the physical presence of local resident Maxwell Davies (or “Max” as he was universally known), whose music and connections drew artists who may never otherwise have travelled to Orkney, and who considered, along with his indigenous management team, the involvement of local people to be paramount to shaping the character, ambition and success of the Festival. His persona was synonymous with this dynamic, flourishing event.
The nature of that success – from major world premieres and the bold programming of new music to local drama (the traditional Johnsmas Foy) and music projects involving school children – has been well-enough documented through the years, as have the key figures, many no longer with us, who shaped the profile of successive Festivals.
Who can forget such noble presences as local author George Mackay Brown lurking modestly among regular audiences, or visiting luminaries happy to muck in with the mysterious bus arrangements that whisked audiences from one venue to the next. The sight of actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales settling themselves on a bus, complete with shared travel rug to warm their legs, was a tender one, especially when they alighted casually at the other end to deliver, with son Sam, a thoroughly absorbing performance of Stravinsky’s A Soldiers Tale.
Fast forward to recent years, especially following Max’s death a decade ago, and the fundamentals are the same, even if the profile has evolved to reflect a broader artistic vision, fierce economic reality (big orchestra visits are more prohibitive), increased competition (other festivals have arisen in Scotland modelled on St Magnus), even the expectations of new-generation Orcadians.
The person overseeing all this for the past 15 years is composer and Festival director Alasdair Nicolson. And as the 50th Festival approaches (19-28 June) he is doubly aware of the importance of balancing legacy with future sustainability.
“There are folk in the Festival’s background that were significant artistically in the wider world of the arts, not just related to St Magnus or Orkney,” he says. “I suppose the two most prominent names were Max and George Mackay Brown. They still feature: they may not now be at the centre of things always, but I think that’s because we are developing as a festival; and also, because our funding and the nature of the world we inhabit these days as a public funded organisation places a lot of demands on us on what and how we need to be doing things, the issues you need to be tackling.”
The one thing forever set in stone, and what gives the Festival its unique charm, is Orkney’s physical detachment from the mainland. Nicolson, who grew up on the Inner Hebrides, fully recognises that. “It’s vital to keep in mind what works on a remote island off the north coast of Scotland, where all the things we’re experiencing in life at the moment – cost of living, cost of fuel – impacts significantly on the way we do stuff and what is is possible for us.”
Looking through the highlights for this celebratory year, possibilities are reflected in a generous weighing of ambition and practicality. A new performance space has been created at the Orkney Auction Mart, Kirkwall’s fully-functioning cattle market whose sale ring hosted a production of Carmen several years ago complete with distant bovine chorus. “This is an adjacent industrial shed, not dissimilar in size to the nearby Pickaquoy Centre,” Nicolson explains. “The thing is, we haven’t that many ‘true’ venues in Orkney, so we have to make them up!” It plays host to an opening concert by the newly-formed Festival Orchestra (19 June), a performance of Mozart’s Requiem by the Festival Chorus (21 June), the premiere of a new theatre piece with music, Jasper the Cat, by the local Assembly Project (23 June), local folk group FARA (25 June), and a Festival finale by the award-winning Co-operation Band (27 June)
While bringing major symphony orchestras is now a more taxing challenge for Nicolson – remember Isaac Stern, Andre Previn and the RPO coming to Orkney for the 10th anniversary Festival in 1986? – creating his own Festival Orchestra has proved a more practical initiative. “We’ve brought together members of the BBC SSO, SCO, LSO and Birmingham Royal Ballet, plus younger string players auditioned from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and elsewhere.” The opener in their welcome concert, conducted by Nicolson, is Maxwell Davies’ Welcome to Orkney”.
Nicolson’s creative fingerprint also features in Jasper the Cat. “It’s something I’ve been threatening to write for some time. Jasper was a well known cat in Albert Street where our office is. He even had his own Facebook page. He’d often sit in the middle of the road cleaning his bits as cats do and traffic would just have to wait. He died a couple of years ago and I thought it would be great to do something for kids. I’ve written the story and now the music – a Peter and the Wolf sort of thing. There’s even a bit for the audience to join in.”
The Wallace Collection with its late founder John Wallace (far right)
Like so many Festivals this year, Nicolson has included a major tribute to the late trumpeter and RCS principal John Wallace: a performance in St Magnus Cathedral (26 June) of The Invisible Symphony, a mammoth transcription by Wallace of Gabrieli’s antiphonal Canzoni et Sonata, performed as a surround sound spectacle by the Wallace Collection and Co-operation Band.
“John, of course, played Max’s trumpet concerto and was involved with many other things to do with Orkney,” he recalls. “I spent many zoom calls last summer, until he sadly passed away, working out how we could do this work. It was his absolute dream to get the Gabrieli into St Magnus Cathedral, though discovering subsequently that the Co-operation Band’s numbers had swelled significantly this year left me with the challenge of fitting them all into the venue.”
As a neat quirk, Nicolson has programmed 50 events for the 50th Festival. “Actually not quite”, he admits. “We had to drop a Johnsmas Foy [the Festival’s traditional local community theatre production] when one of its key members had to withdraw late in the process.” Nonetheless a healthy variety of presentation styles offers choice in abundance.
The Stromness chamber music series features American-Armenian viola da gamba player Lucine Musaelian (20 June), pianists Samson Tsoy (21 June) and Pavel Kolesnikov (22 June), the Fibonacci String Quartet (23 June) and the Hebrides Ensemble (24 June). A focus on Icelandic music, reflecting the country’s close historic connections with Orkney, includes: medieval poetry and song from the all-male ensemble Voces Thule (23 June)); the UK premiere of Mörsugur, a 2022 opera based on Icelandic mythology for soprano and cinematic audiovisuals; and a solo recital by Icelandic-American cellist Geirþrúður Anna Guðmundsdóttir (22 June).
There are performances too from Rory McCleery’s Marian Consort, guitarist-lutenist Jacques Carroll-Leitao, and a percussion extravaganza featuring Owen Gunnell’s O Duo with students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Folk music, poetry, storytelling, a special retrospective Festival exhibition widen the experience. As will the introduction this year of a celebratory Festival parade. “The whole community’s getting behind that one,” says Nicolson.
Challenging as his role is in these tough economic times, Nicolson is optimistic that the Festival will deal with the issues and secure a future beyond the current milestone. His role, he stresses, is that of “custodian”. “In recent years we’ve faced the danger you might not get the funding you need, that Covid was so bad it killed the atmosphere as it were, yet I’m pleased to say we’re in good health, still going at 50 and still delivering stuff that others don’t, delivering new things.
“I‘ve also put things on stage that people in Orkney wouldn’t otherwise see, proud to have brought up the BBC Symphony Orchestra recently from London – it had never been before – but more importantly, to have given opportunities to younger performers before they become the ones that are everywhere. Pavel [Kolesnikov] and Samson [Tsoy] are back this year – they were with us with us before they were known. Mostly, it’s about maintaining and developing and making sure the St Magnus Festival remains lively, that it has life in it.”
Orkney’s St Magnus Festival runs from 19-28 June. Full programme details at www.stmagnusfestival.com
The Linlithgow String Orchestra launched its 10th Anniversary Season last November with an enterprising new work – Engine Shed – by the idiosyncratic British composer Deborah Shaw. Fast forward to its Summer Concert last Sunday and, once again, the LSO was premiering a new commission, this time by the 21-year-old Kent-born composer, and recent graduate of Kings College London, Joe Cobb. Thus the Anniversary Season continued with the same sense of discovery that marked its opening.
This programme was mostly about “connections”, explained the orchestra’s unflappable conductor Bill Jones, elaborating in a colourful spoken narrative that weaved its connecting thread throughout the hour-long proceedings. Convenient historical landmarks stamped their influence: 500 years since the Battle of Linlithgow Bridge (full-bodied string arrangements of 16th century madrigals by Pierre Passereau and Anon Scots to open with); 400 years since the death of John Dowland (his The King of Denmark’s Galliard and the signature melancholy of his famous Lachrimae); and 250 years since the US Declaration of Independence (Aaron Copland’s riotous Hoedown).
Where these performances were credited with unflinching enthusiasm, at times lustily or baked with luxuriant texturing, there was also much to enjoy in the sentimental sweep of Mascagni’s much-loved Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana. A string arrangement of William Harris’ double choir motet Faire is the Heaven may have left those who know its choral manifestation (and Edmund Spenser’s flavoursome words) a little short changed, but it served its purpose in paving the way for the wild exuberance of Copland’s Hoedown.
As for Joe Cobb, what was the connection there? Jones, it transpired, in his former professional life as head teacher at a Kent prep school, had spotted the youngster’s musical talent at an early age and was delighted to see him now on the brink of a career in composition. Cobb had responded to the LSO’s commission with Calluna (meaning “heather”), a picturesque meditation on the soft unpredictability of a moorland landscape.
Its modal opening cast an instant spell, simple and questioning, leading to a conversation of textures that combined dense post-Delian harmonies with light and airy lyricism. The ending, atmospherically whispered, made its magical point.
In completing the official programme, Jones revealed yet another intriguing connection in anticipation of an encore especially devised in honour of Cobb, whose great uncle, it transpires, was the Paisley-born singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. Cobb was not only presented with an original Humblebums album (the folk rock band that featured both Rafferty and Billy Connolly), but the LSO then let rip with their own arrangement of Rafferty’s biggest hit, Baker Street, audience participation encouraged and briefly, politely, received.
Although it was not excessively long, there was a lot – perhaps a little too much – in Saturday’s penultimate RSNO season concert. On the podium was Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Hahn, appointed to the orchestra two years ago, whose programmes are always characterful.
This one began with most of the stage in darkness for a movement entitled God-Music from George Crumb’s Black Angels, his anti-Vietnam War composition best known in the recording by the Kronos Quartet. With the orchestra’s percussion section in a pool of light, the evening’s soloist, cellist Kian Soltani was spotlit above them in the choir stalls for the three minutes of his aria accompagnata.
It led directly into the big opening chord of Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, a statement of opposition to the Second World War which failed to please its commissioners but has become a concert hall favourite as the first of the composer’s few orchestral works without a soloist.
That matching of two complementary works was repeated after the interval by Hahn with Wagner’s Prelude to Act 1 of Tristan und Isolde preceding Alexander Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, the composer’s slightly unhinged expression of extra-marital lust.
Immediately before the interval sat the work on the ticket, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, for which Soltani had been booked to make his RSNO debut. The first cello in Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra a decade ago, Soltani now has a global career as an orchestral soloist and chamber musician and his powerful yet precise performance of this most familiar of works made some passages leap into focus with startling clarity, although there may have been listeners looking for more obvious emotion in his playing.
The Adagio third movement was fulsome, and the cellist’s capacity for delicacy was nowhere clearer than in his encore of Reza Vali’s The Girl from Shiraz.
Hahn’s programming decisions around the work, while fascinating, did raise some questions about the way the music was used. If it is hard to say whether Crumb would have approved of the repurposing of his colourful way with wine glasses as a precursor to the Britten, but it seems likely that Wagner would have been less than pleased to be the hors d’oeuvre to the excesses of Scriabin.
It certainly seemed that the full passion of the RSNO strings was reserved for the closing piece, with all its echoes of Wagner and Strauss and leader Maya Iwabuchi adding perfectly measured soloing. In the Prelude to Tristan, on the other hand, the section leaders often seemed to be working hard to encourage their players to up their game. Perhaps there was an element of post-tour fatigue, given that the orchestra is newly returned from dates in China.
That said, the climaxes of the Poem of Ecstasy were epic and joyous, and Hahn paced his idiosyncratic evening with great skill, never over-directing his musicians but across all the details and urging them to full expression when it really mattered.
Keith Bruce
Picture of Kian Soltani in rehearsal by Clara Cowen/RSNO
The members of VOCES8 are too young (even sole original one, Barnaby Smith) to remember, but during their early ascendancy, The Beatles’ songwriting skills were favourably compared with those of Franz Schubert by the music critic of The Times.
So it was a nice conceit to bracket the German composer’s 1822 Schiller-setting Liebe, sung by four male voices from the octet, with a sextet version of Free As A Bird, the John Lennon song which the other Fab Four unearthed to add to the first volume of the Anthology reissues in 1995.
The segue was, however, one of only two sequences that survived from this small chamber choir’s planned programme, the other being the pairing of their equally well-known version of Kate Rusby’s Underneath the Stars and Joshua Pacey’s more recent arrangement of Danny Boy.
The recital they gave was an interesting answer to the question baritone Christopher Moore told us they are often asked: what does such a small unaccompanied group of singers do if one of their number is not in tip-top health.
Here it was one of the sopranos who took as limited a part as possible in the proceedings, and the repertoire was adjusted to take account for that. The result was an evening that leaned much more on the lighter side of the VOCES8 back catalogue.
It was a little briefer, but no less coherent, although the concert’s title, Give Me Your Stars, became a nonsense as it was taken from young composer Lucy Walker’s setting of words by American poet Sarah Teasdale, which, like Stardust by the ensemble’s composer-in-residence Taylor Scott Davis, we never heard.
But if those contemporary works written for the group were missing, the complexities of Renaissance polyphony were still there in the opening Regina Caeli by Victoria and William Byrd’s Praise our Lord, all ye Gentiles and devotional music still ended the first half with Holst’s Nunc Dimittis now preceded by Bobby McFerrin’s reworking of The 23rd Psalm and Arvo Part’s The Deer’s Cry, both masterpieces of elegant simplicity.
Apart from Eric Whitacre’s All Seems Beautiful to Me, and a very brief taste of Ward Swingle’s Bach at the start of the second half, the rest of the music was more pop, but brilliantly arranged and sung. The octet’s fondness for combining two songs in one featured in Jim Clements’ version of Bond themes For Your Eyes Only and You Only Live Twice, and Alexander L’Estrange’s of Fly Me To The Moon and Come Fly With Me.
The latter sat in the middle of the ensemble’s closing “jazz” sequence, which was really nothing of the kind as every note was precisely notated and rehearsed in the fine arrangements: of improvisation, there was none.
It is the detail of those settings that always fascinates. VOCES8 contributed their singular sound to Paul Simon’s most recent album, Seven Psalms, which explained the inclusion of Australian Naomi Crellin’s arrangement of Homeward Bound. In amongst its complexities it was still possible to hear the original harmonies of the Simon and Garfunkel hit properly given their place.
COME August, the Edinburgh International Festival will see the new collaboration by Owain Park’s precision vocal group Gesualdo Six and American director Bill Barclay’s Concert Theatre Works, Death of Gesualdo, in the Queen’s Hall.
So it was helpful that Perth Festival hosted two performances of the partnership’s previous show, Secret Byrd, created for the 400th anniversary of the death of composer William Byrd in 2023. It was also a major undertaking for director Helen Band and her volunteer board, who had to source almost all the props and staging and transform the city centre St John’s Kirk for the production – as well as masterminding the front-of-house arrangements for what was a superb promenade show.
With viol consort Fretwork providing the instrumental interludes from Byrd’s catalogue, the chief musical ingredients were the four and five-part Mass settings he wrote for clandestine services, as a Recusant Catholic himself. Hearing such powerful a cappella singing in the Kirk’s intimate acoustic was an utter joy, and – although they were referring to suitably antique-looking scores – the costumed choristers clearly know this music backwards now and blend together beautifully.
Secret Byrd is much more than a concert, the whole point being to recreate the tension and the dangers Roman Catholics faced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, even if her majesty turned a benign blind eye to the beliefs of her favourite court composer for many years.
What was flagged as “Interruption” in the online programme, around two thirds through the sequence, could have been gunshots or just hammering at the door, but candles are extinguished and the priest bundled into hiding as the music stopped. Some of the audience members recruited to make up the table of twelve at the heart of the action look as alarmed as the performers.
The danger passed and the programme continued with counter-tenor Guy James delivering Byrd’s Elegy on the death of Thomas Tallis (Ye Sacred Muses). This immersive experience included soup and bread and a thimble-full of communion wine for all, and the musicians went about the business of bringing everyone into the story with practiced ease.
This year’s EIF programme also includes what has become a regular residency at The Hub by the Aga Khan Music Programme and its mission to share the classical music of other cultures was brought to mind by the Perth Festival’s opening day music in Perth Concert Hall from The Ayoub Sisters. Laura and Sarah may have grown up in Scotland but they use their conservatoire training on violin and cello to delve into their Egyptian and Arab heritage.
Others have gone down this road before them, notably Yo-Yo Ma with his Silk Road Project (after he had made his reputation with mainstream Western classical music), the Aga Khan Master Musicians, and even the flirtation with the sound of the souk by post-Led Zeppelin Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The Ayoub Sisters used basic modern technology to make their less well-funded journey from a suburban Glasgow bedroom.
Their Saturday evening concert found them in the context of a quartet with the guitar of Giulio Romano Malaisi and the drum kit of Giovanni Velez – a last minute dep for their usual percussionist but you would never have known that had Laura not spilled the beans.
The crowd-pleasers were dispensed with early, culminating in a breakneck “Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, before a focus on their meticulously-sourced original repertoire, much of it taken from their self-released (post-Decca) Arabesque album.
There is a maturity to what the sisters are doing now that assuredly deserves investment – both from audiences as well as producers. This date was part of their ongoing tenth anniversary tour, so a sense of summing-up what they have done so far was appropriate. What is more exciting, however, is what they might go on to do now.
ANTON Bruckner famously worried over his Symphony No 4 for many years – Sir Simon Rattle recently claimed to have found more than a dozen different versions of the work. By way of comparison, Ryan Wigglesworth reworking a piece originally commissioned by the Halle and the Bergen Phil – who gave the premiere six months before he became Chief Conductor of the BBC SSO – may just be coincidental, but there were other points of parallel.
As Bruckner symphonies are lengthy, so Wigglesworth’s Magnificat is longer than many a composer’s setting of Mary’s prayer; Sir James MacMillan’s is only a little over a third as long. At half an hour, Wigglesworth’s is a big concert piece on its own and it was programmed here as the filling in a Bruckner sandwich, preceded by and flowing from his Ave Maria, with the symphony following the interval.
This Magnificat breaks the Latin text down into five movements, which allows for a lot of exploration of texture in the orchestration but perhaps serves the totality of the poetry less well. There is, nonetheless, some lovely word-setting, both for the soprano soloist – the composer’s wife Sophie Bevan, to whom the work is dedicated – and a small chorus, the BBC Singers.
The single word of the title was thoroughly explored at the start, gently at first by Bevan before being taken up by the choir. It was in the second movement, Et exsultavit, that the soloist was able to show off her operatic power and range, while in the third she was partnered with the eleven men of the choir. The full choral ensemble had to wait until the finale and the rhythmic Sicut locutus est for its best ensemble showpiece.
Does the work lack the coherence of brevity? Perhaps. There are times when Wigglesworth’s exploration of the capabilities of his large orchestral forces seems a little “Young People’s Guide”, but there are some wonderfully original uses of combinations of instruments and textures. Musically, if not lyrically, the structure of the piece is very beguiling even if its emotional heart is not revealed until the tutti of the last section.
Bevan sang at both the Bergen Phil premiere with conductor Ed Gardner and the Halle’s first performance in Manchester three years ago, with her husband conducting, where he teamed it with Mahler, whose approach to Bruckner 4 was to cut it. Wigglesworth’s context here seemed especially apposite though, and his direction of the Bruckner symphony as good as it gets, for a symphony that is the composer’s most accessible but slightly looked down upon by serious devotees. That “Romantic” label probably doesn’t help.
To my ears the SSO strings (across all sections) and brass were the conductor’s best allies on the night. Although principal horn Chris Gough was obviously awarded the first solo bow at the curtain-call, it had not been his finest hour. The composer’s replacement Scherzo is probably his most recognisable music to many ears, and it was crisply rendered in this performance, and the Beethovian echoes in the recapitulations of the Finale were unmistakeable. The handling of the diminuendo before the third (or fourth) last climax by Wigglesworth and the SSO strings was world class.
The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on June 11 and will be available for 30 days thereafter on BBC Sounds.
A little more than a year ago, young Finn Emilia Hoving made an instant impression conducting a demanding and colourful programme with the RSNO. Now here she was at the helm of the BBC Scottish for another testing concert of new music alongside an established repertoire favourite which was an unqualified triumph. It would be good to think that she might become a more regular feature on the podium in Scotland.
We can assume the opener was her choice. Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen’s The Rapids of Life is a majestic piece of contemporary orchestral expressionism that has its inspiration in her own experience of giving birth and as a memorial to her illustrious kinswoman composer Kaija Saariaho, whose death occurred during the process of composition and to whom it is dedicated.
The BBC SSO co-commissioned The Rapids of Life and this was its UK premiere, for which Tarkiainen was in the audience. The audience – filling the lower level of the Grand Hall on Sunday afternoon – loved the piece, which is full of great organic swells of sound and delicious details from cello, flute and trumpet as well as contrabass clarinet, harp and celesta.
Its ten minutes or so would have been a normal serving of freshly minted music in many an orchestral programme, but it was the appetiser for the new accordion concerto written for Ryan Corbett by Jay Capperauld that followed. Almost all the work we hear from the Ayrshire composer at the moment is for and by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, where he is Associate Composer, but this piece was premiered last year by Corbett with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and was richly deserving of this second hearing.
Capperauld’s fascination with the darker corners of science history are to the fore in Galvanic Dances, starting from the 18th century experiments of Luigi Galvani and the effects of electricity on moribund organic material, which also led to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
John Dowland, Tchaikovsky and Gregorian chant get the nod in a work that is quintessential Capperauld, which is to say both dramatic and often funny, albeit in a dark way. With four microphones on his instrument, the BBC were taking no chances in capturing the virtuosic work of the soloist, which will be well worth catching when the concert is broadcast.
Capperauld has written Corbett a very testing score, which he despatched, from memory, with unflustered poise. The unusualness of the accordion as a concerto instrument was immediately irrelevant, although there were bars recalling Jimmy Shand, Astor Piazzolla and Jack Emblow if you wanted to hear them. With widescreen cinematic orchestral scoring, but there were also moments that resembled American post-minimalism and Hoving clearly revelled in her job, with all the changes in tempo and dynamics of the work.
Corbett had a number of cadenzas, and one gently arpeggiating figure introduced the calmest section of the piece, although its delicacy still seemed a little sinister in the composer’s style.
Capperauld was also in the hall to be cheered to the rafters at the work’s end, and the confident swagger of his composition found an apposite echo after the interval in the “Montagues and Capulets” opening of Hoving’s selection from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet music.
It was a generous one, opening and closing with pairs of movements from the composer’s Suite No. 2, bracketing five from the Suite No. 1. With minimal pauses, Hoving made the full three-quarters of an hour flow symphonically and there were too many solo turns of quality from the SSO players to name, but Gareth Brady’s tenor sax was an essential addition and punctuation from the snare drum absolutely on point.
UKRANIAN conductor Kirill Karabits opened his first concerts in Scotland for some years with a work that paralleled the Stravinsky classic that ended it. The classic was The Firebird, the Diaghilev-commissioned ballet music that established the composer, based on a Russian folk-tale.
Karabits has championed the work of Azerbaijan’s Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, who celebrates her 79th birthday in ten days’ time and is a leading musical voice in her homeland. Her Nagillar, premiered at the Lucerne Festival in 2002, is a musical telling of a magical adventure story from the 1001 Nights which requires an orchestra of similar size to The Firebird and also begins on the string basses, whose ensemble performance was one of the highlights of the night.
Stravinsky’s narrative is much longer and more spacious, with room for wind and brass soloists to show off their individual virtuosity, and Karabits made sure that the most propulsive music, which the composer would develop even more in The Rite of Spring, was driven and exciting.
Nagillar is just as intense and much more compact, the magic carpet of its orchestral riches keeping the tale flying from the big opening chord through to a subtler conclusion, with the strings and harp to the fore. Karabits’ enthusiasm for the piece is well-founded and it is a chunky programme-opener that the RSNO should keep in its library.
Fine though both these works were, it was Elgar’s Violin Concerto and soloist Nicola Benedetti that ensured the concert was a sell-out. Like The Firebird it also dates from 1910, but it is a peculiarity of its history since 1932, when a very young Yehudi Menuhun was the soloist, that its duration in performance is still a talking point.
Last year Christian Tetzlaff released a recording with conductor John Storgards that was as brisk as Elgar originally intended, and very different from one by Vilde Frang and Robin Ticciati from the previous year. Twenty years previously, Nigel Kennedy was also respectful of the more deliberate interpretation of Menuhin, as was – perhaps less surprisingly – Benedetti in her 2020 recording.
Karabits and she maintained that same approach live, although her playing made light of the enormous technical demands in both the first and third movements. They are the most captivating of the piece – especially the finale – and the Andante slow movement, while lyrical enough, lacks a big Elgar tune to make the whole work as popular as some of his other music.
For all its intricacies, however, the concerto does have a compelling arc to its shape, which both soloist and conductor communicated perfectly, with the RSNO responding superbly. The playing of the strings before, during and after the virtuosic third movement cadenza was instinctively complementary, and the reception unarguably as much for the music as for the star soloist.
No need to worry when one of the extraordinary Kanneh-Mason clan call off a concert engagement. Among seven talented siblings there will always be one who can step into the breach. For this occasion – the now customary annual Cumnock Tryst Launch Recital – it was down to pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason to fill the shoes of her cello-playing older brother Sheku, currently recovering long-term from a persistent hand injury.
The event itself served two aims: for Festival founder and artistic director Sir James MacMillan to reveal his 4-day programme for the upcoming 2026 Cumnock Tryst Festival in October (see details here); and to fulfil the Tryst’s wider policy of programming one-off concerts throughout the year.
On Saturday, nothing whatsoever was lost by the familial substitution. In her well-balanced hour-long Cumnock programme, 23-year-old Jeneba Kanneh-Mason glided through a sequence of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Florence Price that exhibited not only a supercharged technique, but also a deep-rooted curiosity of the music’s inner soul, its emotional and stylistic challenges, and most teasingly its intellectual surprises.
She opened with Bach’s Partita No 5 in G. This was a performance that gripped from the moment she touched the keys, her finger work distinguished by exhilarating definition, her detailed interpretation akin to acute forensic analysis of the music’s inner workings. The directional flow over the seven movements was effortlessly compelling, the final Gigue arriving like some wild contrapuntal maelstrom.
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in D minor, the so-called ‘Tempest’, provided more open space for Kanneh-Mason to explore. It’s a work dating from the composer’s troubled exile in Heiligenstadt, reflected in the questioning mood and contrasting tempi of the opening movement. There was certainly a structural understanding of that in Kanneh-Mason’s considered approach, its understated nature feeding over into a slow movement filled with lyrical eloquence, yet downplaying any suggestions of unrest in the left hand’s suggestive drum rolls. If by this point the sonata felt a little like work in progress for the pianist, she redeemed herself with a Finale brisling with dramatic verve.
Two Chopin Ballades followed: No 3 in A flat, an easeful stream of Romantically-expressed storytelling, which the pianist delivered with easeful enchantment; and No 4 in F minor, an altogether more beguiling work, which Kanneh-Mason responded to with both Siren-like allure and fiery intensity.
She ended her recital with Fantasie Nègre No 1 in E minor by the early 20th century African-American composer Florence Price. The piece itself invokes a menagerie of influences, a heavily-used spiritual – “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass” – holding its own amid a swirling sea of Liszt, Brahms, snatches of Impressionism, hints of jazz, you name it. Not the most convincing piece of music, but saved by another flawless, persuasive performance from Kanneh-Mason.
This year’s Cumnock Tryst, which runs from 1-4 October, will conclude with a major tribute to John Wallace, the trumpeter, composer and former principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland who died earlier this year.
“We mark his memory and his legacy for Scottish music this year in a special way”, announced Festival director James MacMillan, whose own trumpet concert, Epiclesis, was written for Wallace in 1993. “John attended last year’s Tryst festival and was looking forward to participating in this one,” he added.
Instead, the final two days of this year’s event will not only feature Wallace’s eponymous brass ensemble, The Wallace Collection, but will see them team up with The Cooperation Band in Wallace’s own arrangement of Giovanni Gabrielli’s 1615 Canzoni et Sonate. For this Venetian-style spectacular Festival finale (4 Oct) the massed players will be spread around the encircling galleries of Cumnock’s Old Church. “It will be the ultimate surround sound experience,” promises MacMillan.
On the previous day, The Wallace Collection teams up with The Cumnock Tryst Festival Chorus and local young singers in the town’s Barony Hall for an ambitious programme under the baton of Eamonn Dougan. Besides music by Vaughan Williams, John Rutter and Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, there’s the world premiere of a new work by American composer AJ Harbison.
Thursday’s opening concert (1 Oct) showcases the talents of the young blind Scots pianist Ethan Loch, who came to prominence winning the keyboard category of the BBC Young Musician competition in 2022. He has since appeared as soloist with the RSNO, BBC SSO and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His recital in Cumnock’s Trinity Church features some of his own music alongside that of Gluck, Liszt, Debussy and Chopin.
Other visiting classical artists include the high-profile saxophonist Jess Gillam and virtuoso euphonium player David Childs. Both feature in the Festival’s only orchestral concert (2 Oct) by the BBC SSO: Gillam taking front stage in MacMillan’s own Saxophone Concerto; Childs in the same composer’s Where the Lugar Meets the Glaisnock, a work MacMillan describes as a “love-letter to the town where I grew up”.
Childs also teams up with pianist Christopher Williams in Trinity Church for a Saturday morning recital (3 Oct), while Gillam presents a colourful spread that afternoon with her own Jess Gillam Trio in music ranging from Corelli and Sidney Bechet to Nadi Boulanger and George Gershwin.
The overall Festival template remains familiar. The Cumnock Hour (2 Oct), in partnership with the Boswell Book Festival, sees writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson discuss his new book – Music Lessons: Seven Composers and What They Taught Me – which explores how “dark” music helped him during difficult times. Earlier that day The Unbroken Thread showcases care and share initiatives undertaken by the Riverside Centre with pupils from Hillside School in collaboration with Drake Music Scotland and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Artists appearing at the late night Festival Club include contemporary folk from the Hannah Rarity Trio (1 Oct), a tribute to Stéphane Grappelli by the Seonaid Aitken Quintet (2 Oct), and music theatre cabaret, CAMPS After Dark!, from Cumnock’s own theatre group.
This year’s Promenades at Dumfries House (4 Oct) are given over to local young talent, including Kilmarnock pianist Ethan Chan.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra musicians have been rewarded for a sensational season with very good sales for the closing week of concerts, and that was especially good to see and hear in Perth, where a superb programme could be enjoyed in what is the finest acoustic in which to appreciate their playing.
Proving once again that nothing is beyond the SCO’s range, Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s programme bracketed two Ninth Symphonies around the singular character of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1.
The piano soloist for that was Steven Osborne, a musician of similarly eclectic capabilities, but ideally matched to this mercurial work. He was teamed with the solo trumpet of Aaron Azunda Akugbo, reflecting the origins of the work as an abandoned Trumpet Concerto.
Scored for a string ensemble, and benefitting from the augmented sections required for the symphonies, it is a strange but beguiling work, incorporating quotations from Beethoven and Haydn, and hugely virtuosic for the pianist. That was the composer himself at the work’s premiere, and it is not hard to hear his day-job as a movie-theatre accompanist in much of the writing.
It was preceded by the same composer’s Symphony No 9, one of his briefest, and less frequently heard than many of his longer works. That’s a pity, because it is a very colourful piece and the Allegro first movement makes a lively concert-opener, even if its frivolity was not what Stalin expected as a celebration of victory in 1945. Emelyanychev set a pacey tempo that didn’t deny the hints of music-hall about the score and maintained a lightness of touch in the performance.
After a robust solo from guest leader Sini Simonen, the scoring moved on to feature first clarinet Maximiliano Martin and principal trumpet Peter Franks before bassoonist Cerys Amrose-Evans had the lion’s share of the limelight from the Largo into the closing Allegretto. All were on top form, and, with some terrific pizzicato passages from the low strings, the orchestration was always intriguing and beautifully clear.
That set the template for a superb account of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 “From the New World” after the interval. If the Perth audience had been enthusiastic for music that was probably unfamiliar to many, they were about to be blown away by the interpretation of a well-loved work.
As they had been placed for the Shostakovich symphony, four basses were centre-stage, high at the back of the platform, the four horns on their right and trombones and tuba to the left. The strings were augmented to 18 violins and six each of violas and cellos. This was a big SCO, but still far short of symphony orchestra size and the winds were as usual, with oboist Katherine Bryar doubling on cor anglais for the Largo and first flute Andre Cebrian also playing piccolo.
If Shostakovich 9 is a compact symphony, albeit in five movements, here was a deliciously compact reading of Dvorak 9, the dynamic accuracy of the strings under that slow-movement cor anglais tune utterly mesmersing. Emelyanychev brought such finesse from the string players that it couldn’t help but draw as much attention as the composer’s best-known melody.
The rhythms of the Scherzo, be they Native American or Czech, were as precision-tooled and, indeed, every gleaming detail of Dvorak’s masterpiece shone as if being played for the first time in what was an unforgettable reading of an old war-horse of the repertoire.
These season-ending performances, in Perth, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and Glasgow City Halls have been dedicated to the memory of viola section stalwart of over 30 years, Brian Schiele. In the programme, 10 of his colleagues, past and present, share memories of his character, musicality and generosity. It is another example of the SCO doing things properly, but it was the music-making of the orchestra that really did him proud.
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has announced the appointment of its first ever female Music Director.
Lithuanian-born conductor Giedrė Šlekytė, 37, who debuted with the RSNO only last December in a critically-acclaimed performance of Mahler’s First Symphony, takes up her new position at the start of the 2027-28 Season. She will meanwhile assume the role of Music Director Designate with immediate effect.
Šlekytė succeeds Thomas Søndergård, whose successful 18-year partnership with the RSNO – leading to his appointment as Principal Guest Conductor in 2012, then as Music Director from 2018 – will nonetheless continue through his new role as Music Director Emeritus. During the 2027-28 Season Søndergård will return to lead four concert programmes.
Based in Austria, Šlekytė has enjoyed a growing reputation in the fields of both symphonic repertoire and opera. Besides guesting with such major orchestras as the Vienna Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Staatskapelle Berlin, she served as Principal Conductor of the Staadtheater Klagenfurt from 2016-18, and later as Principal Guest Conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz from 2022-25.
In the opera world, Šlekytė has conducted productions at some of the most prestigious opera houses, including the Wiener Staatsoper, London’s Royal Opera House and the Staatsoper Berlin. She returns to Deutsche Oper Berlin to conduct a new production of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer later this year, before undertaking Beethoven’s Leonore with MusikTheater an der Wien in early 2027.
Although still relatively unknown to Scottish audiences, Šlekytė made a powerful impression in her only appearance thus far with the RSNO, when she conducted Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto alongside her very distinctive Mahler One.
VoxCarnyx’sreview of the performance noted that “where Šlekytė had exerted an impressive command over the orchestra in the concerto, she had the field to herself for Mahler’s First Symphony and took full advantage.” It spoke too of “the clarity Šlekytė brought to this [Mahler] performance, her no-nonsense baton technique and instinctive pacing.”
Announcing Šlekytė’s appointment, RSNO Chief Executive Alistair Mackie said: “There are weeks in rehearsals when something shifts. A buzz starts, momentum builds. You can feel it coming from the musicians themselves. And when it does happen, our audiences can feel it too. That’s what happened with Giedrė.
“When she joined us last year, her musical ideas and the way she works with players spoke for themselves. Giedrė gives the orchestra room to breathe and to play. The connection – musical, cultural and personal – was there from the start. She is the right person to carry forward what Thomas has built. The foundation he created is a strong one: an orchestra that knows itself, plays with confidence, and is ready for what comes next.”
Šlekytė inherits an orchestra that, under Søndergård and in increasingly straitened fiscal times for arts companies, has enjoyed international success through major tours of the USA, Europe and (later this month) China, while at home demonstrating remarkable versatility in the range of work it has undertaken, from major focuses on Richard Strauss and Mahler to high-profile film track recordings undertaken at the RSNO’s state-of-the-art recording facilities in Scotland’s Studio.
Recognising the opportunities that affords, Šlekytė said: “It is a great joy and honour to be appointed as Music Director of the RSNO starting with the 2027:28 Season. I got to know the RSNO as an orchestra of musical excellence but also curiosity, versatility, open-mindedness and great energy.
“Lots of exciting concert programmes and recordings are in the planning, and I can’t wait to join the RSNO family, grow together and inspire the audiences in Scotland and beyond.”
If it is difficult not to miss hearing Voi che sapete and Dove sono sung in Italian, nonetheless it is pretty much inarguable that performing Marriage of Figaro in English makes it more accessible. Even with Amanda Holden’s translation of the libretto, the machinations of Figaro’s parentage and Cherubino’s infatuations are complex to follow.
Sir Thomas Allen’s production of Mozart’s 1787 hit was already very aware of the class war at the heart of the comedy of Figaro’s wedding and it is even more evident in this revival. All that hiding-in-the-same-chair nonsense in Act One becomes an obvious metaphor for the similarity in the amorous attitudes of Count Almaviva and his pretty page, one because he feels his position entitles him, the other caused by raging youthful hormones.
As Edward Jowle’s performance in the title role makes clear, cocksure Figaro is also not without his flaws, never as smart as he thinks he is and too ready to think the worst of his bride-to-be, Susanna (Ava Dodd). Bringing up the houselights for his bitter Act Four aria tries to make all the men in the audience complicit in his self-deception.
Jowle and Dodd have real chemistry together and excellent voices, and Simone McIntosh’s energetic Cherubino is another fine piece of casting, well matched with Kira Kaplan’s Barbarina when she makes her appearance.
It was hard to warm as quickly to Alexandra Lowe’s Countess and Ian Rucker’s Count, she coldly disappointed rather than nursing thwarted passion, he a little stiff and short of heft at the bottom of his range, but that feeling dissipated in the swirl of the action and the building momentum of the ensemble set-pieces.
There were some lapses in clarity in the diction of some of the other principals, particularly in the patter-pace verses, but Scottish Opera’s casting, mixing experienced hands with young talent and new faces with company stalwarts, is up to its usual high standard – and similarly tall in the case of Jowle, Rucker, and Edward Hawkins as Doctor Bartolo.
This is a superb-looking staging (designed by Simon Higlett), with snappy scene-changes and sumptuous period costuming, the one assumed by the Countess and then adopted by Susanna clearly echoing Audrey Hepburn’s in the film of My Fair Lady, with all the associated trappings of pretending to be someone you are not.
Choreography is in the reliable hands of Kally Lloyd-Jones, the chorus moving as precisely as the principals do, and demonstrating as clear a grasp of ensemble coherence.
The bed-rock of the whole production, however, is in the pit where Dane Lam conducts a very characterful orchestra, with natural trumpets and horns, 30-odd strings on sparkling form (notably leading into the septet at the end of Act Two), and the winds to his left full of fine soloists.
Singular praise, however, has to go to Toby Hession for his piano continuo, on the conductor’s right. It is full of delightful witty surprises, enlivening the recitatives and almost commentating on the action. The composer would have loved it.
Keith Bruce
Further performances in Glasgow tomorrow and 15, 17, 20 & 23 May then touring to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.
Picture of Simone McIntosh as Cherubino by Mihaela Bodlovic
Finding soloists within its own ranks is no longer a tactic the Scottish Chamber Orchestra reserves for summer touring to Scotland’s smaller halls, although that was where principal cello Philip Higham last played the Schumann Cello Concerto with his colleagues.
In another superbly-structured programme from Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev and the SCO, Higham’s performance of a work he has securely under his fingers was preceded by the young Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and followed after the interval by the UK premiere of Jorg Widmann’s 5 Albumblatter, the composer’s concerto-like homage to Schumann, written as a competition piece for cello students. The orchestrated version of Debussy’s gorgeously melodic Petite Suite brought the concert to a sumptuous conclusion.
In contradiction of the printed programme, it was only in the Mendelssohn that we heard natural timpani, horns, and trumpets, the latter especially effective towards the end of the piece. Emelyanychev found a very wide range of orchestral sound and intricate balance in this brief piece, that might be seen as minor Mendelssohn.
Higham may know the Schumann well, but he never succumbed to the temptation of Romantic wallowing in the music. This was a rigorous performance of a work that surely now has its proper place in the pantheon of concertos for his instrument. If the opening is structurally similar to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, the flow of the piece is all Schumann and the finale, with the soloist’s fiendishly tricky arpeggios in dialogue with the orchestra, surely influenced the composer’s revision of the Fourth Symphony.
Schumann’s chamber music for piano and cello (his own instruments) lie behind the fun and games of Widmann’s 2022 work, also highly technically demanding, but smile-making as well. There is some deconstruction of those influences in the opening movement, amusing dialogue with the bassoons in the rhythmic Liebelei, and a fourth movement that imagines Clara and Robert doing a Bossa Nova around the ballroom. The finale is entitled Mit Humor, but that is an instruction that seemed superfluous.
Debussy’s Petite Suite began as a work for two pianos and the first two movements contain two of his best known tunes. The orchestrated version his publisher commissioned becomes richer as the four movements unfold, and, as he had with the Mendelssohn, Emelyanychev revealed the work’s riches incrementally. Like the Schumann, this is music that can become mushy, but that was never a danger here, in the conductor’s pin-sharp attention to detail. Pointillism, rather than Impressionism perhaps.
General Director Alex Reedijk is 20 years in the post as he launches Scottish Opera’s new season. He looks forward and back with Keith Bruce.
As Scottish Opera launches the programme for its 2026/27 season, there are a number of anniversaries to be acknowledged. In descending order of antiquity, they include the 200th anniversary of the death of Beethoven, the centenary of the birth of the company’s founder Sir Alexander Gibson, the 50th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten, the 30th anniversary of the first Scottish Opera production by Glasgow’s internationally-renowned opera director Sir David McVicar, and the 20th season of General Director Alex Reedijk.
During a long chat in his office at ScotOp HQ, Reedijk was persuaded to look at the path that brought him to that milestone, but was careful to ensure that the others were all celebrated along the way.
To begin with the season, the headline is that it contains six new productions, which is an impressive figure in comparison with recent years, and that has been achieved with clever husbanding of resources.
As already announced, it begins at the Edinburgh International Festival with Missy Mazzoli’s The Galloping Cure, reuniting the team behind the global hit Breaking the Waves.
“It is already booked to go on to Sweden, San Francisco, Canadian Opera and Adelaide,” Reedijk reveals. “It is a piece that needs to be told, and it speaks to our international standing. Missy Mazzoli is in my view the most important female opera composer in the world today, certainly in the English language.”
Co-commissioned by many of those other companies, and working again with Opera Ventures and the EIF, Reedijk is clear that only that range of partnerships make the budget the piece requires attainable.
The company will also be at the Lammermuir Festival in September as usual, a one-off programme in St Mary’s Kirk, Haddington including Britten’s Les illuminations, Phaedre, and Our Hunting Fathers.
Sir David McVicar’s Scottish Opera career began in 1996 with Mozart’s Idomeneo, and he follows up the hugely successful production of Puccini’s Il trittico with the same composer’s final masterpiece, Turandot, premiered a century ago.
The new staging, with Trine Bastrup Moller in the title role, Victor Starsky as Calaf and Hye-Youn Lee as Liu, has the same creative team as Il trittico and will use the original “Alfano One” completion, with its redemptive extra closing scene.
There are many links to other recent Scottish Opera triumphs in the company’s return to the operas of Handel in February. Alcina will be directed by Olivia Fuchs, who was responsible for last year’s acclaimed The Makropulos Affair, designed by Yannis Thavoris, who created the fine set for Jonathan Dove’s Marx in London in 2024, and lit by Jack Wiltshire, last with the company in the same year’s Albert Herring. With Dmitri Jurowski conducting, the cast includes a company debut from soprano Madeline Boreham in the title role.
The same month, and the same set and lighting, adapted by Thavoris and Wiltshire, will see performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh of Fidelio as Scottish Opera’s contribution to the Beethoven 200 season which also features Scotland’s orchestras. Directed by Ruth Knight and conducted by Kensho Watanabe, it will feature Julia Sporsen as Leonore and Thorbjorn Gulbrandsoy as Florestan.
McVicar’s new Turandot is co-produced with Irish National Opera and will go to Dublin in 2027, and Daisy Evans’ new staging of Madama Butterfly, which was seen there last year, is also a co-production and comes to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen in May and June next year.
Evans’ work includes Scottish Opera’s Albert Herring and the pandemic-era filmed version of Menotti’s The Telephone as well as the 2023 Edinburgh Festival success, Bluebeard’s Castle. Presenting Butterfly’s familiar plot as the recollections of Kate Pinkerton, her reading of Puccini has been highly praised.
Her design partner Kat Heath also creates the set for a new Cosi fan tutte in Glasgow and Edinburgh that will be cast from the students of the new Advanced Artist Diploma in Opera at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. A partnership between Scottish Opera and the RCS, it will sit alongside the Conservatoire’s Masters degree at the Alexander Gibson Opera School and, in Reedijk’s words, “prepare young singers for the world of work.” The Dunedin Consort’s artistic director John Butt will conduct Rebecca Meltzer’s production.
The next step for some of those young people may be as Emerging Artists with Scottish Opera, and their work always includes an extensive tour to halls and community venues in every corner of Scotland. Once Opera-Go-Round, more recently Opera Highlights, and now Opera On Your Doorstep, it undergoes a radical revision this year with a condensed version of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel hitting the road in Autumn and Spring for 34 performances.
Reedijk sees it as an important development “in the spirit of evolution.”
“I don’t know if the step away from programmes of arias is forever, but it is time for a change. Hansel and Gretel is a good title for a small scale tour, sung in English with piano accompaniment, and an opportunity to have five singers instead of four and a locally-recruited children’s chorus.
As we had already moved from arias to scenes from operas, it is good to go all the way to a full show, within our means.”
As well as the Diploma initiative with singers at the Conservatoire, the opera company is also working with other institutions of further education, including City of Glasgow College, on skills-building in other areas of the creative arts that go into producing opera. Reedijk points out that the company’s head of costume started her career as a costume trainee alongside a cohort of Emerging Artists.
That appreciation of what goes on behind the performances is unsurprising because the man celebrating his 20th season in charge of Scottish Opera began his career as a stage technician.
“I came to the UK in 1984, on the back of working in theatre and opera in New Zealand. My first job was as a stage hand at Richmond Theatre and from there I went to the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). That led to a summer job as head of technical at Assembly Theatre in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1988 and an early introduction to Scottish Opera, because I needed a replica painting for a Fringe show and was put in touch with Kelvin Guy, head of scenic art at Scottish Opera.”
Reedijk’s work then travelled a circuit that became familiar to many working in the arts at the time. William Burdett-Coutts, who ran Assembly at the Edinburgh Fringe was also in charge of Glasgow’s Mayfest, where Reedijk became technical boss, with the same job at Wexford Opera in Ireland falling between the two in the calendar.
Return visits to New Zealand for the biennial pan-arts festival in Wellington led to working on converting a concert hall for opera productions there.
“New Zealand Opera had gone bust and the festival became the only home for opera in New Zealand, initially importing productions from Australia and then creating their own shows, the second of which was David McVicar’s Fidelio, in 1998.”
When NZ Opera was reconstituted, Reedijk was asked to run the company and he remained there until 2006 when the invitation to come to Scottish Opera arrived.
“When I started in February 2006 I never expected to be here as long, but it is a great place: big enough to do major works and small enough to be flexible and recognise that not everything has to be on a three-year cycle.”
Particularly since the arrival of Stuart Stratford as Music Director, whose previous experience also included a lot of work outside of conventional opera houses, Reedijk has overseen a company that has been open to new experiences and experimentation. That approach came into its own during the Covid pandemic when Scottish Opera was leagues ahead in terms of its response to the health emergency.
Reedijk says: “Opera is a very adaptable, robust art form and you can make it work elsewhere than the main stages. My festival technical background gave me the confidence to look at a problem like the pandemic and go for possible solutions.
“Sometimes people travel under the assumption that opera can only be done in a temple of art, but my view is that it is robust enough to be done anywhere. Storytelling through music and theatre is strong enough to be adaptable to whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.
“And the company stepped up to the challenge, during what were anxious and frightening times.”
Reedijk’s era has also seen a turn-around from Scottish Opera’s regular trips to the government with the begging bowl, as another whopping deficit threatened the company’s survival.
“Financially, my commitment when I started was that we would move from a position of entitlement to one taking responsibility for ourselves. We are charged to make the best of our circumstances and while those are challenging, it was ever thus. We have to use the resources we have available to make amazing work, and live within our means.
“My job is to hang on the legacy of what Alex Gibson set up for Scotland. It’s hard to start something, very difficult to run it, and dead easy to close it. I’m not having that happen on my watch.”
And how long has that watch to run now? As well as clocking up 20 years, Reedijk has also turned 65.
“Stuart and I have a couple of titles we want to get over the line before the close of the decade. Essential works that the company either hasn’t done in a while or not done at all.
“But I do ask myself if it is time to get out the way. Should I open the door for someone else to come in and set a different vision for the company? There are just a few more things I want to see through.”
Full details of new season at scottishopera.org.uk
Portrait of Alex Reedijk by Kirsty Anderson; Irish National Opera’s Madama Butterfly by Ros Kavanagh
It might seem nonsense to talk of an outlier in an event as experimental and diverse as conductor Ilan Volkov’s annual spring weekend of new music, Tectonics, but Saint Abdullah’s 40 minutes in the Old Fruitmarket warranted that description.
Following so recently on the BBC SSO’s evening in the Finnieston night-club SWG3 with Ayanna Witter-Johnston, here was music that might have been more at home there, but instead happened in blackout in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
Saint Abdullah is the label used by Iranian-Canadian brothers Mohammed and Mehdi Mehrabani – although only one of them appeared to be onstage here. Their acclaimed recent collaborations have been with Brooklyn-based percussionist Jason Nazary and Irish producer Eomac (Ian McDonnell), but this intense tapestry of sound required no other ingredients.
Playing at maximum volume to begin, with industrial beat loops and what sounded not unlike a deconstructed recording of trombonist Joe Bowie’s Defunkt band, the set found gentler moments. Those included a long alto sax passage, what appeared to be an electronic concertina but resembled early Soft Machine in sound, birdsong and a chorus of children.
Most of this, obviously, was recorded and sampled, but the live ingredients were crucial to the immediacy of the music. Despite the relentlessness of some of it, you were left wanting more.
The world premiere that ended the SSO’s concert in the Grand Hall later that evening was similar in its encompassing of a great deal in a comparatively short time. Flautist and composer Nicole Mitchell’s Clues from the Rippling of Space-Time would indeed be difficult to pin to a specific date, but revealed long and deep knowledge of 20th century American music for large ensembles, both orchestral and big band, stretching from the interwar years to much more recently.
Mitchell herself was a soloist, and so too was her pianist duo partner Craig Taborn. Both altered their sounds electronically, Taborn producing a growly underscore at one point and plucking strings inside the Steinway at another, but their amplification was subtle and effective.
An equally large range of possibilities was, of course, available from the orchestra, and Mitchell seemed to exploit most of them in her half-hour piece, with some startlingly original orchestration as well as those passages echoing earlier styles. Everyone was very busy from start to finish in one of those works that it was impossible to appreciate fully on a single hearing.
It was the most successful of the programme, although Czech composer Martin Smolka’s Until time takes back its gift, the other brand-new BBC commission, was often fun. Its seven short pieces also covered the waterfront, opening with a strange diatonic scale on harp and ending with lush strings playing, seemingly oblivious to the discords elsewhere on the platform. This was investigative music, never happy to pursue a single direction, and occasionally very filmic, notably in the violins of the second piece and Lynda Cochrane’s piano in the fifth.
Noami Pinnock’s visual art-inspired I put lines down and wipe them away – a UK premiere – opened the closing concert and seemed to have taken us little further when it ended. Its restricted range was surely intended and some of its most original sounds – including a quartet of sanding blocks – were attractive, but it never became more than its limited ingredients.
In some ways the GBSR Duo’s Oliver Leith-composed good day good day bad day bad day was also a Tectonics outlier, because the piece, written specifically for – and indeed about – the couple, is now approaching a whole decade old. It followed Saint Abdullah in the Old Fruitmarket and simply listing the ingredients of George Barton’s percussion set up would be a mammoth job. His tasks began with varying the pitch of wine-glasses using immediately-discarded pipettes, featured a swanee whistle on a harmonica neck stand, and finished with a spoked wheel that could be plucked like a thumb piano or ethereally bowed.
Siwan Rhys might have been less mobile, but her keyboard skills, playing very different music on concert grand and electronic keyboard simultaneously, were extraordinary. Leith’s eight-movement journey through the banalities and anxious moments of a day was fascinating and often very beautiful.
Keith Bruce
Highlights from Tectonics will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show on Saturdays 9 and 16 May and available on BBC Sounds for 30 days thereafter.
Pictures of Ilan Volkov and GBSR Duo at Tectonics 2026, credit BBC.
