Tag Archives: Aidan Oliver

BBC SSO / Canellakis

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Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Conductor Karina Canellakis has some big opera projects on both sides of the Atlantic in the coming season, with Janacek’s Makropoulos Case, The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz and Wagner’s Siegfried in the Netherlands where she is based, and Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss at Santa Fe Opera. She may have begun musical life as a violinist, but her conducting career shows an affinity with singers.

That was very evident at the Closing Concert of this year’s Edinburgh Festival, when she was clearly enjoying the performance of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus in the work that brought this year’s classical music programme to a close, Rachmaninov’s The Bells.

It was also the work that concluded the tenure of Aidan Oliver as Chorus Director, as he moves to Glyndebourne and is succeeded by James Grossmith. The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland conducting graduate inherits a choir on very fine form indeed, wonderfully crisp in their opening utterances in the work’s “Sleigh Bells” start and then in lock-step with the orchestra for the climactic third movement.

The soloists – tenor David Butt Philip and then soprano Olga Kulchynska – have relatively smaller roles until the funereal finale when the chorus partners the baritone, Alexander Vinogradov.

If the symphonic arc of The Bells covers nothing less than human existence from cradle to grave, the two works of the first half were more basic in their concerns. The strings of the BBC Scottish gave Canellakis their best work as she shaped the distinctive sound of Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. This trailer for his opera features the famous Tristan chord, but after hanging in the air for much of the piece, it reached a glorious climax at the end.

For the work in between, Scriabin’s Le Poeme de L’Extase, extra horns and trumpets, harps, celesta, organ and even, handily, bells were added. The composer sometimes referred to this 17-minute tone poem as a symphony, but it really has more in common with the Wagner or modernist works to come in the 20th century.

For all Scriabin’s mystical leanings, the wave upon wave of instrumental climaxes and cascading orchestration in the music seemed to suggest activity rather more physical than cerebral. Canellakis and the SSO paced the work beautifully to its orgasmic last bars.

Keith Bruce

EIF: Edinburgh Festival Chorus

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Edinburgh Academy Junior School

Henry Purcell, in his wicked moments, had fun with canons. On the face of it, they were innocent trifles, but combine the layers of successive voice entries and hey presto, tawdry language emerged from the wilful collision of syllables and vowels. 

In Aidan Oliver’s delightful final day presentation at the Festival, featuring members of his Edinburgh Festival Chorus and small instrumental ensemble, the air remained pure as he and his musicians breezed their way through a short but engaging canonic journey.

It was as much a journey through time. The opening Sumer is icumen in, rooted in 13th century origins and famous for its rousing presence in cult film The Wicker Man, paved the way for a variety of styles and treatments from 17th century Thomas Ravenscroft (his rousing fusion of Three Country Dances presented simultaneously as a round), to one of 20th century Benjamin Britten’s “Friday Afternoon” songs for children (his somewhat darkened version of Old Abram Brown), to the even more up-to-date sounds of Errollyn Wallen, Richard Crossland and Abbie Betinis.

Wallen’s Rice and Beans – and Plantains Too takes its structural inspiration from the Britten, but otherwise is laced with the eclectic contemporary twists this composer always utilises to energising effect. The title refers to a favourite dish from her birthplace in Belize, and here was a performance that served it up a treat, rhythmically infectious and with smiling countenance. It was also a neat little appendix to Wallen’s opera Dido’s Ghost, one of this year’s earlier Festival successes.

Other contemporary gems on Sunday included Betinis’ plaintive Be like a bird, with its surreal whistled conclusion, Crossland’s whimsical Liverpool Street Station, and Bob Chilcott’s updating of Tallis’ Canon, which takes an old favourite and wraps it in a blanket of melting, thick-set harmonies. 

One of the benefits in hearing the EIF Chorus in miniature is to experience it in a scale of repertoire it would otherwise not have time for. When do Holst’s partsongs ever make it onto an international festival platform? Three of them did so here, exposing their lush sentiment and charm.  

All of this could so easily have seemed like a casual miscellany. But thanks to Oliver’s personable and informative spoken links, the whole came together as seamless, directional and enjoyable. 

And it ended on a familiar note, Pachelbel’s Canon, but with the addition of Thomas Campion’s poem “Come, o come my life’s delight” as a neatly interwoven text, arranged by Oliver himself, and – as has so often been the case in this semi-outdoor Festival – a timely intervention from the outside world. On the words “come then and make thy flight” an outgoing plane roared overhead. Perversely. I’ve quite enjoyed these moments.
Ken Walton