Tag Archives: Ethan David Loch

RSNO / Sondergard / Loch

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

One of the most inventive creations during the Covid pandemic was VOPERA’s online production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges with players from the London Phil and a cast that included Karen Cargill as ‘Maman’ (review: VOPERA: L’enfant et les sortileges | VoxCarnyx).

In fact the RSNO gave the work’s Scottish premiere in 1975, 50 years after its first performance in Monte Carlo, and a further half a century later, the orchestra teamed up with the current crop of talent at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to present a staging that not only had the perfect context in the orchestra’s season programme, but also used Glasgow’s concert hall impressively well.

To accommodate the performance behind and above them, the orchestra platform had been extended into the front few rows of the stalls, and the effect on the sound was revelatory from the first work in the concert’s first half.

That was Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a wonderful piece of orchestration that didn’t need the Disney connection from Fantasia to be a well-chosen partner for the Ravel. With its brilliant use of contrabassoon and a series of other solo instrumental turns, it was ideal aural preparation for the cleverness  of Ravel’s magical story.

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which followed, was probably the main attraction for many ticket-buyers, especially as it was played by Ethan Loch, whose performance was being filmed for an upcoming documentary. Soloist and conductor Thomas Sondergard – together with first clarinet Timothy Orpen – served up a perfect Rhapsody, utterly true to its genre-spanning intentions.

However much the pianist was actually improvising his interpretation, it was distinctive and individual, and the pace never let up. Loch’s flamboyant encore of a cadenza from his own piano concerto was less to my taste, but virtuosic.

The collective endeavour behind the 45-minute opera after the interval was nothing short of magnificent. From the choir stalls, the RSNO Youth Chorus made immaculately-drilled contributions, while the RCS Chamber Choir, prepared by Andrew Nunn, sang from stage left of the central playing area. Many of them were costumed for their step-out roles alongside the soloists cast by the Conservatoire’s Head of Vocal Performance and Opera, Jane Irwin.

Mezzo Anna Stephany, as the child, was the sole professional singer, but you’d hardly have known that from the performances of the students. Singling out any individuals would be invidious because this was a terrific collective effort, and as much staging as the piece requires. Ailsa Munro’s costumes and props were witty and apposite, and the direction of Roxana Cole, well-known from her work in challenging venues with Scottish Opera, made remarkably effective use of the limited space, with RSNO first flute Katherine Bryan enthusiastically part of the young company as the instrumental voice of the Princess.

The visible “pit band” in front of them was full of such inspired solo turns, and the skills of this cohort at the Conservatoire, both as soloists and in ensemble were uniformly impressive. If there were a lot of elements for Sondergard to keep working as a team, he appeared to be having the best time doing so.

Keith Bruce

Picture of rehearsal of L’enfant et les sortileges by Hope Connachan-Holmes

RSNO / Sondergard

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

With newly-announced principal double bass Nikita Naumov – transferring from the SCO – in place, the RSNO was this weekend remembering the former leader of the BBC SSO, Laura Samuel, whose death from cancer at only 48 had been a loss to the whole Scottish musical community.

Conductor Thomas Sondergard and the players pulled out all the stops for the occasion, with a second half performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake music that built beautifully from the Act 1 waltz through the sequence of national dances to the final scene of Act 4, added to the more familiar 20th century version of the Suite.

The star turns were Adrian Wilson’s oboe, harpist Pippa Tunnell, and guest leader Ania Safonova, with the flutes and brass also making key contributions, but the whole orchestra was on fire and Sondergard built the music to a magnificent climax. Perhaps the sequence was slightly hampered by the audience applauding each section, but that would have happened at a performance of the ballet so it only reflected how effectively the dancers were being conjured.

The same audience response to the individual movements of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1 could have impaired soloist Ethan Loch’s performance, but his grateful reaction took the edge off any misgivings. More serious was some slight confusion in stage management, primed to dim the lights for the blind pianist’s encore but jumping the gun before the third movement. Sondergard’s swift reaction to that was of a piece with his attentive approach to Loch’s playing throughout the concerto.

While most piano soloists start with a concerto’s printed score before committing works to memory, Loch’s learning by ear is a marvel, and the long first movement of the Beethoven, with its huge virtuosic closing cadenza, was a remarkable demonstration of that. A lightness of touch sometimes seemed lacking in his playing, and his generous addition of two self-composed encores was perhaps gilding the lily, but the device of playing the first of them in darkness was an effective way of sharing his world, and the light music brings to it, with a besotted audience.

The programme had opened with the 1898 Ballade by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s, also a precocious, if not always particular original, talent. The piece made a great opener, however, and the contrast between the large orchestra required for it and the Tchaikovsky with the much reduced ensemble for the Beethoven was eloquent demonstration of the RSNO’s range.

Keith Bruce

BBC SSO / Sanderling

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City Halls, Glasgow

It is more common, fortunately, that a concert whose immediate charms are not obvious on paper turns out to have a rich subtext and surprising programmatic connections, whether or not they were intended at the event’s conception. Regrettably the opposite turned out to be the case with Thursday’s season concert by the BBC Scottish, which will be repeated at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on Sunday afternoon.

What seemed a hit programme started well enough, with a stirring account of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Michael Sanderling conducting the SSO brass, horns and percussion through the disciplined explosion of the music the composer later incorporated into his Third Symphony. Rich-toned and precise here, it is irresistible as a punchy stand-alone and as fine a concert-opener as one might wish to hear, but also a difficult act to follow.

That task fell to Ethan Loch, BBC Young Musician finalist in 2022 and a now a student at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire. Blind from birth, Loch’s ambitions embrace composition and improvisation – both of which would be demonstrated in his encores – but his recital piece here was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 2. Composed before his first numbered concerto, when Chopin was still (just) in his teens, it is a young man’s work, the solo part a virtuoso showpiece and the orchestral writing often thought wanting experience.

Those strengths and deficiencies need not be apparent – the recent RSNO recording with Benjamin Grosvenor under the baton of Elim Cham makes an eloquent argument for both concertos – but they were here. Sanderling gave the 20-year-old pianist the best platform by keeping the orchestra on a tight rein, but Loch’s playing, while accurate and technically secure, was often a little heavy-handed. When the left hand was steadier, in the central Larghetto especially, the increasingly elaborate right hand was more expressive, but the finale lacked the dancing sprightliness it really requires.

For all its melodic riches, there was something slightly lumpen about Sanderling’s account of Dvorak’s New World symphony as well. The SSO strings sounded thicker than usual and the conductor’s tempi seemed very deliberate. There was some fine playing from the winds – Stella McCracken’s oboe and Yann Ghiro’s clarinet in particular – but the fanfare at the start of the last movement failed to give that final theme quite the propulsion it required.

Having said all that, there were clearly many in the very full house who shared few of those reservations, and the box-office appeal of the programme will doubtless work its magic for ticket sales in Edinburgh too.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Michael Sanderling by Marco Borggreve