Tag Archives: Brahms

RSNO’s Succulent Season

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Launching a new season brochure of familiar shape and style, but with a few special ingredients, RSNO chief executive Alistair Mackie told the orchestra’s loyal patrons last night: “It is important to recognise that, despite the challenges faced over the last two years, with the help of our supporters we have accomplished a lot.”

That means that alongside a 19-concert season, which includes eight under the baton of music director Thomas Søndergård, the RSNO continues to embrace the possibilities of digital streaming of concerts and pursuing learning and engagement goals through online means. Its other performances of film and video game music, in partnership with Children’s Classic Concerts, and involving the young musicians from the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and the Sistema Big Noise music education projects are also present and correct, as are the matinee and chamber music performances in its own hall in the RSNO Centre next door to Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Søndergård has chosen to focus on the music of Johannes Brahms, which he studied closely during the pandemic lockdown. In the first months of 2023 the orchestra will perform all four of his symphonies, as well as the Academic Festival Overture. The First Symphony arrives last, at the end of May, as part of an All-Star Gala that teams Nicola Benedetti, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Benjamin Grosvenor to play Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

That concert – tickets for which are certain to fly out of the door as soon as they go on sale – also features the last of next season’s “Scotch Snaps” performances of pieces by composers living in Scotland, with Errollyn Wallen’s Inherit the World. Subscribers can book from April 29 and general booking opens on June 6.

Another, postponed, “Scotch Snap” – David Fennessy’s Riot Act – features in Søndergård’s season-opener, alongside Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, followed the next week by the RSNO debut of harpsichordist Mahan Estafani playing the new concerto by Paul Ruders, which the orchestra co-commissioned. He is the first of a star line-up of keyboard players working with Sondergard over the season, which also includes Francesco Piemontesi playing Beethoven’s Emperor and Leif Ove Andnes with Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto.

Principal guest conductor Elim Chan teams up with pianist Steven Osborne for Mozart K414 in a programme that also includes Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and with the season’s Musician in Focus, clarinettist, composer and conductor Jorg Widman, for her earlier concert at the end of October this year. That concert is also the first to feature Edinburgh’s Dunedin Consort, beginning a three-year partnership between the symphony orchestra and the award-winning ensemble. In 2023 the Dunedin has two concerts in the RSNO Centre, and the Hebrides Ensemble will also appear there under the auspices of the RSNO, with the music of Widman on the bill.

The RSNO Chorus, now under new director Stephen Doughty, closes the season with Verdi’s Requiem in June 2023, and will also give the Sir Alexander and Lady Veronica Gibson Memorial Concert on Armistice weekend this year with Britten’s War Requiem, both with Sondergard on the podium.

ll programme details for the 2022-23 RSNO Season at rsno.org.uk

Read Ken Walton’s interview with Thomas Søndergård and Alistair Mackie here

SCO/ Schumann/Brahms

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Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

It seems entirely fitting that a chamber orchestra should find it so natural to lay on a chamber music series as its digital answer to the COVID dilemma that has laid waste this year’s planned orchestral seasons. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra hasn’t disappointed with the release last Thursday (8 October) of the first such evening concert recorded in its home at the Queen’s Hall. In truth, it required a warm-up number to garner the level of composure that would ensure the evening’s main work – Brahms’ serious-minded String Sextet No 2, Op 36 – got the warm-hearted engagement expected of it. In that respect, Schumann’s Marchenerzahlungen (fairytales) for clarinet, viola and piano, the interweaving intricacies critical in addressing its expressive character, took time to establish an easeful interaction.

It was in the final two movements that William Stafford (clarinet), Felix Tanner (viola) and Michael Bawtree (piano) opened the doors to a genuinely relaxed musical empathy and the charms immediately revealed themselves. Schumann’s music breathed, any four-squareness was forgotten. Bawtree’s rippling pianism in the penultimate Ruhiges Tempo inspired persuasive conversations to surface, serving as a powerful emotional springboard to the determined rhythmic thrust of the finale.

Both works were chosen and warmly introduced by SCO violinist Rachel Smith as “dear to her heart”, and she, herself, formed part of the cohesive string line-up for the Brahms and a performance that tastefully harnessed its mixed emotions. There were many magical moments: the opening gurgle of oscillating violas as a scene-setter for the later glowing cello theme that emerges like an autumnal sun rise; the rustic catharsis that inflames the scherzo; the teasing, embryonic chromaticism that  introduces the questioning Adagio; or the sudden passionate outflow of optimism that sets the Finale apart. 

While we may only be getting occasional sightings of the full SCO in the foreseeable months, it’s a welcoming thought that its component parts are in action and in such good shape.

(View this concert online at www.sco.org.uk)
Ken Walton