Tag Archives: Francesco Piemontesi

SCO / Emelyanychev & RSNO / Sondergard

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Usher Hall, Edinburgh / Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra entitled the opening of its new season From Darkness to Light and that idea was just as audible in the concerts that began the seasons of both the BBC SSO and the RSNO.

At Glasgow City Halls the previous week, it was undoubtedly behind the celebratory strings of Ryan Wigglesworth’s tribute to the SSO’s former leader Laura Samuel, and applied just as well to the trajectory of Schumann’s Violin Concerto, as performed by Daniel Lozakovich.

In the SCO programme it clearly worked for both the opening and closing works. The famous fate motif that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was predictably not laboured by Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev in a pacy and detailed interpretation of the work, following on from a much-lauded BBC Proms performance. It was in the transition from the Scherzo to the finale that the sense of emerging into brightness was most obvious, but this was a far-from-simplistic reading of the symphony with refreshing changes of power and tone in the slow movement as well as in the unfolding of its conclusion.

The concert had begun with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen in a compact and intense version that was truly “chamber” music, with some excellent solo playing from the string front desks and carefully controlled ensemble that always kept a little in reserve. It was a performance that is well worth listening out for when the BBC recording is broadcast.

So too, it hardly needs saying, is the orchestra’s playing of Veni, Veni Emmanuel with soloist Colin Currie, even if the trajectory of the piece arguably defies the Darkness-to-Light equation. Currie must have given a fair proportion of the remarkable number of performances MacMillan’s early percussion concerto has enjoyed since the SCO premiered it with Evelyn Glennie at the 1992 Proms.

It is still one of the most thrilling works in the composer’s now extensive catalogue, and it was good to be reminded that the brasher music is more than balanced with much gentler, melodic, and equally virtuosic, music. The closing bars, when the soloist moved to tubular bells at the back of the stage and the whole orchestra adding tinkling percussion was movingly evocative of the Ascension, so perhaps the SCO’s concert title did work here as well.

‘From darkness to light’ is only one interpretation of the complexity of Mahler’s Symphony No.7, the major work of the RSNO’s season-opener as Music Director Thomas Sondergard continued his commitment to a full cycle of the composer’s symphonies. It’s a valid one, nonetheless, and the conductor certainly suggested as much in his dynamic marshalling of the large orchestra through its long structure. The two Nachtmusik movements emerged especially well, the horn calls in the former, and the sequence of solos – violin, guitar, mandolin and oboe among them – in the latter beautifully calibrated.

There is much operatic about the work’s conclusion, and Sondergard was in his element with the theatrical changes of pace leading up to the dramatic bells that also punctuate this work’s ending.

In a great run of concert openers, the RSNO began its season with Oliver Knussen’s terrific miniature, Flourish with Fireworks, which has long transcended its specific commission by the LSO at the end of the 1980s to become an emblem of the composer’s infectious enthusiasm.

The concerto that followed was Ravel’s in G Major with Francesco Piemontesi the perfect partnership soloist, embracing his dialogues with orchestra members and as eloquent in the lush Romanticism of the central Adagio as in the more 20th century jazzy rhythms of the contrasting outer movements.

Keith Bruce

Picture by Martin Shields

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Ticciati

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s Music Director Robin Ticciati is still best known in Scotland for his tenure of nearly a decade with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and that may well have been a crucial attraction for ticket buyers at Saturday’s concert in Glasgow. He has just ended a slightly shorter stint with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and, curiously, the figures replacing him on the podium in the German capital over the next few weeks include current RSNO Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Hahn, previous RSNO Principal Guest Conductor Elim Chan and Ticciati’s successor as SCO Principal Conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev.

The hall may also have included a few fans of pianist Francesco Piemontesi, once a regular partner of the SCO, both live and on acclaimed recordings for Glasgow’s Linn record label, and more recently seen in concerts with the RSNO and its Music Director Thomas Sondergard.

There again, the sheer novelty of having a visiting orchestra in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, which used to boast entire seasons of international guest orchestras, may have been the draw. The London Phil, which will be back in Scotland for an Edinburgh International Festival appearance with the National Youth Choir of Scotland in August, has not played in Glasgow, or Scotland, since the year before Ticciati took up the baton at the SCO.

Just as likely, though, music-lovers were in their seats for the programme: Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony – works both closely associated with the women in the lives of the composers, Clara and Alma.

By the time Robert Schumann eventually completed his concerto, his wife was as busy bringing up his children (and looking after him) as pursuing her playing career, although she gave its first performances, which met with mixed responses.

It is much more recently that audiences have taken it to their hearts and Piemontesi gave a masterly account of the work, he and Ticciati leaving plenty of space in a reading that was sometimes languid but, at others, robustly rhythmic. The score is a true partnership between soloist and orchestra and the LPO’s wind principals and a rich, broad string sound to which the lower instruments made a crucial contribution, were as important as the soloist’s virtuosity.

The Adagietto fourth movement of Mahler 5 is the bit everyone knows, whether from the film Death in Venice or another funeral. That association may half-derive from the march at the start of the work, for which Ticciati again set out his strict-rhythm stall, and with which principal trumpet Paul Beniston was entirely onboard.

He and first horn John Ryan were the most prominent solo stars of the symphony, the latter delivering a kaleidoscope of tonal colour, but there was excellent playing everywhere and Ticciati was always faithful to the instructions on the score. That meant only the merest pause for breath after that Adagietto, which was certainly “very slow” but far from as glacial as Karajan’s 12 minutes.

Whether or not it was actually written for Alma, it was just one course in the full feast in this performance. The way the orchestra and conductor delivered the complex counterpoint of the preceding Scherzo and the equally rapid elaborations of the Rondo-Finale was just as impressive.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Robin Ticciati by Marco Borggreve

RSNO / Søndergård

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Usher Hall, Edinburgh

The only scheduled speaking from the stage on Friday night was at the start of the concert, when leader Maya Iwabuchi invited her former violin pupil and now featured young composer, Lisa Robertson, to introduce her premiering work, am fior-eun.

However, music director Thomas Søndergård could plainly not let the evening end without thanking the audience for turning out in such numbers and bringing such vocal enthusiasm. This was an Usher Hall filled to the rafters as the Edinburgh Festival would be delighted to see it, proving that the Celtic Connections festival at the other end of the M8 has no monopoly on January ticket sales.

If the music-lovers came out for the promise of Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto and Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, they brought ears receptive enough to greet new music with cheers of appreciation.

Robertson’s piece may be briefer than the 19th century works that followed, but it is on no lesser scale. Selected from the harvest of the RSNO’s Composer Hub project, it glories in the opportunity to compose for a full orchestra with a score that swooped across the available talent onstage like the eagles near Robertson’s West Highland home that it depicts.

Here was music that not only realised every word of the composer’s eloquent statement of her intention, but was audibly made in collaboration with those now playing it, extended techniques from strings, winds and percussion included. That’s not to say that others will not want to play it – such a colourful depiction of the Scottish landscape is sure to find further performances – but that these musicians set the bar for those who follow them very high indeed.

It was also a perfect appetiser for what Søndergård and soloist Francesco Piemontesi had in store. In the way of current programme typography style shared by the RSNO and the BBC Scottish, there was an adjective on the cover of this weekend’s booklet: “Majestic”. It was no idle boast, because this was a concert that was all about making a big impression, as Lisa Robertson certainly had.

Piemontesi is a pianist who can tailor his performance to every occasion, and this was him giving it large. In collaboration with the conductor we heard Beethoven in all his majesty, and full of drama.

Did Søndergård overstate the transition into the Finale? Perhaps. But could he have asked the strings to push even more in the slow movement? Possibly also true. Certainly, there was no risk of the soloist being overwhelmed by the orchestra – Piemontesi was on fire from the first bar to the last.

The Brahms was just as epic, Søndergård drawing a clear distinction between how a full-sized symphony orchestra should play this music and more modest “period” interpretations, using bold fluctuations in tempo without sacrificing any precision. There may have been swifter Brahms symphonies, but few as rich.

Keith Bruce