Tag Archives: Jay Capperauld

BBC SSO / Hoving

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City Halls, Glasgow

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.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Ryan Corbett by Andrej Grilc

SCO / Emelyanychev

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City Halls, Glasgow/Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

It is not yet an imminent problem, but there are two succession issues that the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will have to address, and they both look challenging.

Scottish composer Jay Capperauld has set a very high bar for whoever follows him as the orchestra’s Associate Composer, in providing bespoke works that suit every aspect of the SCO’s multi-faceted schedule. He was at it again last week with the world premiere of his Stylus Scarlatti, arrangements for chamber orchestra of four keyboard sonatas from the first half of the 18th century by Domenico Scarlatti, precision-tooled to fit Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s now-annual “Baroque Inspirations” concerts.

In those, the conductor, often leading ensembles from the keyboard and throwing in some wind instrument playing during the interval, matches classic early music with more recent works that draw on that era. Capperauld’s new work was perhaps one the most straightforward pieces he has supplied to the SCO library, but in its nods to the way other modern composers – like Michael Nyman – have visited the same territory it was characteristically knowing, as well as containing music tailored to specific solo talents in the orchestra.

The other challenge will, of course, be the eventual departure of Emelyanychev himself. It is almost inconceivable that there may be someone else with his combination of talents and enormous, infectious, energy waiting in the wings.

On Sunday afternoon at the Queen’s Hall, “Maxim & Friends” teamed him with the SCO’s string section leaders for two Schumann chamber works from 1842: the Piano Quartet, Op 47 and the Piano Quintet, Op 44.

With the string players using gut strings, Emelyanychev’s keyboard was a London-built 1888 instrument from French piano-makers Erard, borrowed from Glasgow University. Its distinct ringing tone – absolutely clear even if it lacked the muscle of a modern concert grand – combined beautifully with the string sound in a performance that may have been very close to how the works were originally heard, but refreshed them bracingly for modern ears.

These demanding pieces, composed for Schumann’s virtuoso wife Clara and the top string players in Germany at the time, are among the sunniest he wrote, particularly the Quartet, with its lovely Andante Cantabile movement – set up here by a startlingly brisk account of the Scherzo.

Both are in E flat, but the Quintet is more epic in scale as the composer explores and reworks his material with the thoroughness of a Beethoven symphony. The performances of both, with Emelyanychev’s keyboard skills matched by those of violinists Stephanie Gonley and Marcus Barcham Stevens, Max Mandel on viola and Philip Higham on cello, were absolutely first rank.

At Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday evening, there was a very specific chamber approach to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3, played by just ten strings, opening a programme again played entirely using gut strings. Both warm and rustic-sounding, the sound gave a particular quality to an expanded ensemble for Britten’s youthful Simple Symphony which suited its folk-influenced music well.

For Handel’s Water Music, it was a more hybrid band on stage, with modern rather than natural horns joining the ensemble. Perhaps that was simply a pragmatic decision, for reliable accuracy of pitch, but the result was more than satisfactory, and the little harpsichord flourishes at the start of some movements were a characteristic Emelyanychev addition.

SCO Principal Condustor Maxim Emelyanychev directs the orchestra in a programme of Baroque Inspirations, featuring works by Bach, Handel, Britten and Schnittke, plus the world premiere of an arrangementt of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas for orchestra (‘Stylus Scarlatti’) by the SCO’s Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld.

As was the procession of a few of the players to the foyer during the interval, heralded by a drum beat and led by the conductor himself playing a selection of early flutes and recorders. Perhaps this ingredient had more impact when it was a complete surprise to the audience and front of house staff, but it was still great fun, even if the SATB choral Spanish work handed out on hymn sheets for audience participation was a challenge too far for many ticket-holders.

Friday’s programme ended with a work from the conductor’s native Russia that was composed by Alfred Schnittke just eight years before Emelyanychev was born.

There is indeed “Baroque Inspiration” to be heard in Schnittke’s Gogol Suite, a sequence of eight short pieces based on short stories by the writer, but there is also the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. At other times, however, it sounds as much like the Merry Melodies of Warner Brothers cartoons or the pantomime of Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

With the players still gut-strung, the band included perhaps the most integrated use of electric guitar and bass guitar that any composer has achieved, a vast panoply of percussion from the whole toy box to tubular bells, and no fewer than four keyboard players. Simon Smith was imperious on concert grand, Stephen Doughty and Andrew Forbes covered harpsichord, celesta, and something invisible in between, and Emelyanychev himself handled the centre-stage prepared piano which played out the ominous “Testament” at the end.

The expression “multi-tasking” barely hints at what the SCO’s Principal Conductor brings to the job.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Maxim Emelyanychev by Andrej Grilc; picture from City Halls foyer by Christopher Bowen

Cumnock Tryst Ensemble

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Cumnock Old Church

In the hours running up to the opening concert of this year’s Cumnock Tryst festival, footage of East Ayrshire’s head of education Linda McAuley-Griffiths ridiculing the value of music’s place in the school curriculum was running rampage on social media. “I’m no really seeing the point of a wean knocking seven bells out of a glockenspiel,” was her careless remark caught on camera at a September council meeting. She has since apologised and said her words were taken out of context.

It was hard to ignore the crassness of McAuley-Griffiths’ comments as this year’s festival opening concert got under way. It featured the Cumnock Tryst Ensemble, a flexible instrumental collective established last year as a high-calibre performance group populated by some of Scotland’s most prominent musicians. Equally, though, it functions as a resident resource for the educational and community projects spearheaded by Tryst founder and globally famous composer Sir James McMillan, himself a product of an East Ayrshire schooling. 

This was the Ensemble’s own showcase, an assorted combo of flute and strings, and a programme of mainly contemporary works that utilised various permutations within. At this concert’s heart, though, was the shadow of founder-cellist Christian Elliott, who died earlier this year and the age of 41, and whose memory was central to a programme tinged with personal reflection and homage. 

Individually, the performances were often touching, at times scintillating. As an opener, Duncan Strachan’s unaccompanied cello struck a neat conversation between the ecstatic freneticism and meditative acceptance underpinning MacMillan’s Easter-inspired And he rose. Violist Felix Tanner completed the brief MacMillan solo coupling with In memoriam, written three years ago to mark the passing of Julliard String Quartet violist Roger Tapping, its moments of despair challenged by an intense virtuosity.

With Judith Weir’s St Agnes, a simple elegy for viola and cello, the air of contemplation prevailed, yet its intriguing play between playing styles – bowed legato tropes punctuated by pizzicato flourishes – felt like a gathering release en route to the heightened exchanges of Weir’s The Bagpiper’s String Trio, quirkily excitable but with ghostly undertones. Violinist Gordon Bragg made his first appearance here, bringing a top-end gloss to the ensemble. 

The third brisk movement from Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Jato (Jet Whistle) introduced flautist Ruth Morley, her duo performance with Strachan electrically-charged in its inexorable journey to a soaring catharsis, only then to be calmed by Lisa Robertson’s enchanting Dlùthas for solo violin, inspired by the composer’s own wistful improvisation in Midlothian’s Rosslyn Chapel – though possibly also by Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Morley re-took the stage for her own quietly animated Whisper.

What followed verged weirdly on the burlesque, the RSNO’s eccentric principal double bass Nikita Naumov playing for laughs as he introduced Julius Goltermann’s Souvenirs de Bellini – a predictably lugubrious set of difficult variations for cello and bass, even more so in what seemed like a touch-and-go performance at times. Nor, despite the obvious virtuosity on display, was Naumov’s solo performance of Emil Tabakov’s Motivy as defined is it might have been, some moments leaning dangerously towards heavy metal.

What had been missing thus far in the programme was a piece involving the full ensemble, a factor remedied in the closing performance of New Cumnock-born Jay Capperauld’s superbly crafted Schiehallion!. Commissioned in 2023 by King Charles for the Honours of Scotland ceremony in Edinburgh, and based on Scottish tunes selected by the monarch, Capperauld’s acute sense of characterisation, succinct originality and wit is laid bare. Harmonic ingenuity, imaginative texturing, and the sheer joy expressed in this sparkling music was met by a spirit of delivery to match.

It also pointed retrospectively to a weakness in the design and presentation of this programme. Up to a point, it had felt a bit like a routine school concert – one act off, one act on, too much unstructured chat between items, and maybe let’s get the sad stuff out of the way first. Could the church space have been more creatively purposed, Robertson’s lovely Dlùthas, for instance performed from one of the empty balconies? More imaginative production and choreography would have made all the difference.

Ken Walton

(Photo: Stuart Armitt) 

SCO / Gonley

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City Halls, Glasgow

Paradoxically, one thought prompted by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s performance of Schubert’s Symphony No 4 was whether the orchestra and Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev intend to complete a survey of Schubert symphonies, having already recorded three of them for Linn.

What would Emelyanychev bring to this one, once labelled the “Tragic” and sometimes dismissed as lightweight and derivative by comparison with others in the composer’s catalogue? Without a conductor on the podium, the SCO, under the minimal direction of leader Stephanie Gonley, produced a dynamic interpretation that gave the lie to that opinion, and grew in stature as the work unfolded.

For a small orchestra, the players managed to produce a mighty sound at times, particularly in the finale, which combined impact with clarity. Before that the Scherzo was fleet and fun, even if it does owe a debt to both Beethoven and Haydn, and the Andante, wonderfully resonant from the lower pitched instruments, had a profound edginess.

Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, on the other hand, is agreed to be an early masterpiece, and was the headline piece of the concert, which was originally scheduled to be directed by Lorenza Borrani, leader of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Instead it was Gonley who partnered first viola Max Mandel as soloists, with the pair communicating equally with their colleagues in a performance for which a conductor would have been superfluous.

There is an equal division of labour between violin and viola throughout the work and this reading really shifted up a gear with the dialogue of the cadenza at the end of the opening movement, a conversation that continued in a very moving account of the central Andante. If the Presto finale sounds at times like the overture to an opera the young composer had yet to write, the slow movement is to all intents and purposes the hit aria.

The overture to this concert programme was a world premiere, no less, and another fine new work from the orchestra’s prolific Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld. Carmina Gadelica, or “Song of the Gaels”, takes its inspiration from the rich musical traditions of Scotland’s Western Isles, including the unaccompanied Psalm-singing of the Free Kirk, the metronomic work rhythms of Waulking Songs and, finally, country dance music.

Composed for a ten-piece wind ensemble in five distinct movements, Capperauld’s imaginative scoring is as beguiling as always, even if this is one of his less esoteric works. In fact it is easy to imagine it becoming the entry point for many new listeners to appreciate his music, although having wind soloists of the quality of those in the SCO was a huge advantage for its first performances.

Keith Bruce

BBC SSO / MacMillan

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City Halls, Glasgow

As it was revealed in the programme, it seems most unlikely that Sir James MacMillan was the only soul in the City Hall unaware that the Scottish premiere of his new Concerto for Orchestra, “Ghosts”, would be preceded by the award of a prestigious Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Philharmonic Society, as was suggested, but the conceit at least spared the conductor the additional task of preparing an acceptance speech.

More importantly, it gave RPS chief executive James Murphy and the charity’s chair Angela Dixon the opportunity to explain the significance of the honour – MacMillan joining a pantheon that includes many of the most familiar names of classical music – and to remind the audience of the composer’s vast back catalogue, beginning with the acclaim for The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and Veni Veni Emmanuel. (BBC Radio 3 should further expand on that when this concert is broadcast.)

As it stood, however, this was already a mighty evening of music, painting a comprehensive picture of where MacMillan is now, because that new piece was preceded by no fewer than eight orchestral works from composers nurtured at the festival he has established in his home town, The Cumnock Tryst – an event that has already been garlanded by the Royal Philharmonic Society.

They ranged in length from a few minutes to a quarter of an hour and demonstrated a diversity of stylistic approaches, but remarkably all but the first of them, by Copenhagen-based Yorkshireman Matthew Grouse, were by composers from Ayrshire. MacMillan is fond of saying that there must be something in the water to grow such a concentration of talent in the area, but Dixon was correct to point out that the secret ingredient is plainly his dedicated mentorship.

Grouse’s Solods and Tuttis was an intriguing beginning, a collage-work commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Cumnock Tryst, it attempts to convey the musical experience of the Covid-19 pandemic with the sudden switch to online and filmed performances. Musical quotations and technical glitches were mashed-up in a wry sonic soup that changed gear and tempo relentlessly, a bracing test for both the players and the conductor.

Michael Murray’s brief Visions of the A-Frame, inspired by the relic of the coal-mining industry that stands as a memorial to lives lost near Auchinleck, provided a contrast – and some theatrical direction of the orchestra by MacMillan. The self-taught Murray, has been part of the Tryst story since it began and this atmospheric piece was perhaps the most emblematic ingredient of the evening.

Electra Perivolaris has also been part of the new music at the festival for some years. Her two short environment-inspired works, A Wave Breaking and A Forest Reawakens, owe a debt to Peter Maxwell-Davies as well as her acknowledged influence, Judith Weir. The first featured some particularly lovely writing for the winds, while the second grew to a warm choral climax.

Jay Capperauld is undoubtedly now the best-known of the products of the Tryst and currently enjoying a purple patch as Associate Composer with the SCO, which explained his personal absence from this concert as his newest work, Bruckner’s Skull, was being premiered by the orchestra in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall.

His equally intriguingly-titled Inertia of a Bona Fide Pyschopath dates from 2014 but this was its Scottish premiere. Melodious flutes and clarinets  alternated with splashy discordant harpsichord in a compelling evocation of mental stress, and Capperauld’s skill with colourful orchestration was always evident as cacophony and statement battled it out.

There was some of that technique in Scott Lygate’s Engines and Men as well. The composer himself was soloist on this single-movement concerto for contrabass clarinet and orchestra, his majestic instrument receiving its own share of the applause when he brought it onstage. He demonstrated a virtuosic range of extended techniques on it too, while the orchestral writing began with a string underscore before ranging into the jazzy involvement of the other winds, and became distinctly cinematic as the work opened out.

After the interval, MacMillan’s own music was prefaced by two short pieces from Gillian Walker, both inspired by poetry, the first in Shetland dialect, the second Lowland Scots and both very redolent of the speech rhythms of their source. The specific melodic echoes in Jean Redpath’s Skippin’ Barfit Thro’ the Heather made it an appropriate partner for MacMillan’s Concerto for Orchestra “Ghosts” which quotes Beethoven’s “Ghost” Trio and alludes to Debussy’s trio for flute, viola and harp.

Larger combinations of instruments within the sections of the orchestra are employed at various points in what is a multi-faceted but very clearly-structured work. Rich in melody, “Ghosts” is MacMillan at his most approachable and it is a piece surely destined for regular performance. Written for the fullest orchestral forces, it also makes virtuosic demands of individual players with some terrific passages for brass and clarinets, and switches from familiar combinations of instruments to more esoteric ones. The SSO played it quite brilliantly for him.

Keith Bruce

Nordic Music Days: SCO / Manze

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City Halls, Glasgow

A programme of new music is not what Scottish Chamber Orchestra patrons have come to expect from the visits from Andrew Manze, but perhaps this contribution by the orchestra to the Nordic Music Days weekend suggests a broader remit since his appointment as Principal Guest Conductor.

The obvious reason for his presence on the podium was the Scottish premiere of Swede Anders Hillborg’s Viola Concerto, as he also conducted its first performance three years ago by its dedicatee, Lawrence Power, with the Royal Liverpool Phil.

The virtuoso violist is in a class of his own, and the work demands all his skill as it knocks any preconceptions about the capabilities and tonal colour of his instrument out of the park. As Manze mentioned, the work’s Covid-era composition can be heard in much of the writing, particularly the furious “Rage” of the opening movement, which has a reprise at the end.

It is redolent of Appalachia as much as Scandinavia, and there is an appeal to the work that suggests a global audience in mind, not least the closing string crescendo’s resemblance to The Beatles’ A Day in the Life, accompanied by a vocal cry from the players. That Hillborg took his bow wearing an Abbey Road album cover t-shirt was presumably no coincidence.

Behind the frantic bowing of the solo part, there is some very specific scoring throughout the concerto from slapped string basses to sustained chords on piano and SCO principal viola Max Mandel’s drone note beneath Power’s later cadenza.

The composer’s Swedish contemporary Madeleine Isaksson provided the short work that began the second half. Flows (Tornio) is the central part of a geographical triptych and much more recognisably “Nordic” with a compelling narrative arc in which its rich scoring dissolved to something much simpler.

There is nothing simple about James MacMillan’s Symphony No.2, which closed the concert. It is 25 years since the SCO gave its premiere and the piece is not ready to give up all its secrets yet. It’s a peculiar sort of symphony, the main course of the second movement framed by two much briefer – although hardly slighter – sections. Much of it would not readily be identified as bearing the composer’s signature at all and the audible influences range dizzyingly wide.

To the Wagner, Boulez and Berio he acknowledges, one could add Shostakovich and Messiaen, and – much less predictably – hints of Ravel and even a few bars akin to John Williams’ score for Star Wars. Manze brought an expansive intelligence to this performance which kept revealing its more fascinating depths. It is well worth tuning into the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the concert for this work as much as anything else in the programme.

The composition that is likely to keep most listeners by their wireless sets, however, is the work that opened the evening. Jay Capperauld’s Death in a Nutshell was first performed by the SCO three years ago (shortly after the premieres of both the Swedish composers’ pieces, curiously), with MacMillan conducting. Capperauld was then made SCO Associate Composer (as MacMillan has once been), and has made an exemplary contribution in that role thus far. If this work was a factor in his appointment that would be no surprise.

Perfect Hallowe’en fare, its inspiration in the dioramas of crime scenes made by Frances Glessner Lee is remarkable and the programme notes which accompany it are a compelling read. They are far from compulsory, however, as the six-movement work is simply terrific music, and its Cluedo/Hitchcock vibe, complete with hints of Herrmann, comes with bits of theatre (percussionist Louise Goodwin’s claw hammer) and some glorious melodic material, often to match the grisliest stories.

Keith Bruce

This concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Wednesday November 6, available thereafter on BBC Sounds.

Pictured: Jay Capperauld

SCO Chorus/Batsleer

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Great Hall, Stirling Castle

As chorus director and conductor Gregory Batsleer pointed out, the performers on stage in the restored, if slightly jaded, splendour of the Great Hall of Stirling Castle have an excellent view to the National Wallace Monument and the Ochil Hills which matched the heaven and skywards theme of most of the works he had programmed.

He conceded, however, that the audience is not in the same privileged position, so it was down to the choir to communicate that. Thankfully the SCO Chorus is capable of reaching heights other ensembles can only aspire to.

The two newest works in the programme were, perhaps, furthest from that theme as well as closest to home. Andrew Carvel is a tenor in the choir as well as a composer and wrote his setting of Psalm 150, which lists a suggested instrumentation for the Lord’s Praise, for a BBC broadcast from St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh. With its fluxing music, it is recognisably hymn-like, but a long way from congregational.

The SCO’s current Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld, contributed a setting of a contemporary poem by Fife-based Niall Campbell. The Night Watch is about the joyous sleeplessness of caring for a newborn, a sort of inverse lullaby which Capperauld has set to use the individual and sectional talents of the choir, especially the pure-toned sopranos.

Less than a month after the Dunedin Consort singers gave a memorable performance of Tarik O’Regan’s Scattered Rhymes, it was a joy to hear another of his choral pieces, The Ecstasies Above. Setting Edgar Allan Poe’s Israfel, which recognises the beauty of the archangel but also his otherworldliness, the piece is full of rhythmic challenges as well as shifts in dynamics. With instrumental support from a quartet of SCO players – violinists Gordon Bragg and Amira Bedrush-McDonald, violist Brian Schiele and cellist Philip Higham – those sopranos were once again on star form.

They did not have the whole show to themselves, however, and the full-voiced basses sounded remarkably Russian for John Tavener’s Syvati, the choir’s drones and Eastern intervals complemented by Higham’s cello from the minstrel’s gallery, from where he also played Tavener’s contemporaneous cello solo, Chant.

The other liturgical works in the programme were Roxanna Panufnik’s Kyrie after Byrd, inspired by the 16th century composer and less than a decade old, and the opener from James MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motets, from 2007 and ideally voiced to introduce the sound of the choir in this historic venue.

If there was an enticement for the uninitiated to buy tickets, it was in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, regularly voted the public’s favourite classical piece. Few, however, would have heard it in this arrangement by Paul Drayton, in which Bragg’s violin had a choral accompaniment and the instrumental soloist only had our full attention in the closing bars.

Using a brutally condensed version of the George Meredith poem that inspired the composer (fewer that a tenth of the lines of verse), the score is mostly wordless and demands a broad range of techniques from both the full choir and a number of  individual voices within it. Like much else in the recital, it proved a demonstration of the technical mastery of the SCO Chorus.

Keith Bruce

SCO: The Great Grumpy Gaboon

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Perth Concert Hall

ALL orchestras have education and outreach departments these days, but the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was a trail-blazer with admired initiatives from its earliest days. So it is more than fitting that its 50th anniversary season  should include another ground-breaking project.

The orchestra’s current composer-in-residence Jay Capperauld has achieved something very special with the 45 minute piece he has written for young people. Not only are the tastes of his target audience of four to eight year-olds not fully-formed, but it is also impossible to predict what music they will have been exposed to at home or at nursery and primary school.

Capperauld’s solution is to cover many possibilities. The suite of music he has written for this collaboration with story-teller and illustrator Corrina Campbell includes a little of everything. It opens with a Broadway-like overture, and includes a fair amount of jazz-inflected material, but there are also moments of Scottish traditional fiddle and ceilidh reels, a journey through the countryside with an English pastoral feel, and a drum-kit-led big band excursion. There are many clap-along moments in the score, which suited the very young audience as much as the slapstick action on stage.

Those performances are the other remarkable element of The Great Grumpy Gaboon. Aside from an effective but never intrusive voice-over by director Chris Jarvis, there are no extra performers in this SCO project. Although the bulk of the orchestra are in concert black attire, seven players, alongside conductor Gordon Bragg, are named characters in the narrative, with extravagant head-gear, props and costumes, and a very mobile approach to playing their instruments.

The title role is played by first bassoon Cerys Ambrose-Evan and that rhyming with their instruments is carried through the others, excepting her nemesis, Screature, played by bassist Nikita Naumov. If such expansive performance seems in character for some of the players, regular concertgoers will see long-serving first trumpet Peter Franks and principal flute Andre Cebrian in a new light.

There are details in the narrative that probably don’t come across as they should just yet, and the message of the story (“be kind”, basically) probably escaped a fair percentage of the audience at the first performance, but it is impossible to fault the gusto with which the musicians went about their extra-musical work, with daft dancing, silly clowning and roaming into the auditorium all part of the show.

Without a shadow of a doubt The Great Grumpy Gaboon will get slicker, and the orchestra has clearly invested in it with an eye to many future performances. What is beyond argument is that Capperauld has given the SCO a score that makes the effort completely worthwhile.

Keith Bruce

SCO: 50th Birthday Concert

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City Halls, Glasgow

It was in this very hall, on 27 January 1974, that a brand new Scottish Chamber Orchestra first broke onto the scene, offering a mid-sized complement to the magnitude of the nation’s existing symphony orchestras. On Friday, in a spruced-up City Halls – refurbished 18 years ago – today’s SCO presented its 50th Birthday Concert to both a packed house within, and a live Radio 3 listenership at home.

As its current chief executive Gavin Reid explained in his pre-concert welcome, this was a programme representative of an orchestra with an exciting future ahead, but expressed in terms of the unique strengths that have sustained it for half a century. So there was a core Classical menu of Mozart and Haydn, offset by the contemporary sounds of composers Elena Langer and Jay Capperauld, not forgetting the vivacious, spontaneous creativity of principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, who makes every programme he directs seem like it is fresh out the box.

That was true from the word go in Moscow-born Langer’s quirky suite Figaro Gets a Divorce. In the same way that Christopher Rouse’s percussion concerto “Whatever Happened to Alberich” imagines how life for Wagner’s miserable Ring Cycle anti-hero turned out, Langer muses on the comic fate of Mozart’s (and Rossini’s) Figaro. 

Emelyanychev took it for what it is, a musical pantomime playing free with pastiche and parody to  manufacture its gauche, sometimes cartoonesque, delights. After the shady, scene-setting fog of Almaviva’s castle, a love song introduced a theme not dissimilar from one of Ravel’s in his Daphnis et Chloe. Indeed, the spirit of Ravel was often conjured up in music that was artfully textured, often unnervingly beguiling.

And there was plenty fun – a Keystone Kops-like chase, a steamy tango (all the more woozy for Ryan Corbett’s accordion interjections within the ranks) and a big-time Cabaret-style skirmish – A Mad Day – that romped unchallenged to the end. It was a piece that triumphed on adrenalin, its attendant energy overlooking any momentary weaknesses in compositional continuity.

Emelyanychev was joined by fellow pianist Dmitry Ablogin as duelling soloists in Mozart’s Concerto in E flat for Two Pianos – or rather fortepianos, as the Russian duo opted for the more delicate period choice of instrument. It may not feel like one of Mozart’s most accomplished works (everything’s relative!), but with the entertainment value provided here, and the gutsy clarity that is the SCOs signature Mozart sound, thrills weren’t short in supply.

And surprises! What was this showmen-like tit-for-tat preamble improvised by the pianists? Surely not Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto? Which is exactly what is was, conveniently in the same key of course, and a languorously hanging dominant chord to complete the joke, the punchline being its segue into the Mozart proper. 

From hereon in, Emelyanychev and Ablogin ramped up the solo dialogue into a cat and mouse game, enclosed physically within the surrounding orchestra, the whole mischievous visual interaction adding to the playfulness of the music. The final Rondo was the icing on the cake. 

Or rather it would have been, had it not been marginally upstaged by principal cellist Philip Higham’s poetically breathtaking encore performance of The Swan from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, accompanied by the two pianists. 

On paper, the second half was exclusively populated by Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony, the orchestra now standing to deliver a performance that responded immaculately and vitally to Emelyanychev’s imaginative twists and turns. It was perfection without being boring, neatly coordinated nuances that momentarily froze time without losing focus and direction. Ample surprises, but all in the best possible taste.

What followed was also meant to surprise – a masterful piece of “occasional” writing by the SCO’s composer-in-residence, Ayrshire-born Jay Capperauld. His birthday gift was an ingenious variation-like fantasy on the tune Happy Birthday to You, the theme’s rhythmic essence teasingly displaced, almost hooligan-like in its swagger and belligerent domination of the entire piece. 

This was virtuosic writing, bullishly imaginative, concise but emotionally extravagant, perfect for its purpose and ripely thrown off by an obliging SCO. I’ve probably said this before, but Capperauld should turn his hand sometime to the world of film music. He has an instinctive feel for capturing the moment.

Ken Walton

Here this concert again on BBC Sounds

Taking the long view

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As the Scottish Chamber Orchestra celebrates its 50th birthday, long-serving viola player Steve King looks back – and forward – with Keith Bruce

It is one of the mysteries of music that orchestras – in Prague and Vienna, but also in Edinburgh and Glasgow – have an identifiable sound that survives changes of personnel over the decades. It is usually assumed that curatorship of that individuality is in the hands of the players that have been there longest while conductors, even those retained on contract, come and go.

As the SCO marks the golden anniversary of its first concerts with a 50th birthday programme, Steve King has just celebrated occupying the viola number four chair for 40 of those years. Not that he is one for looking back wistfully to earlier eras.

“I love the SCO now more than I’ve ever done,” he says. “It’s a brilliant orchestra. When we have extra players they always comment on how friendly it is and how passionate everyone is about making music. With our principal conductor at the moment, Maxim [Emelyanychev], it is a real joy.”

“He’s an amazing playing musician as well as a conductor, and he never stops. Some conductors are quite precious (mentioning no names) but Maxim is just fun. He rehearses in such a way that we really understand what he is looking for, although he is always searching and never content. And that’s the way it should be, I think.

“And of course, as he develops – because he’s still very young – it becomes more interesting. Come the concert he may do things differently but because we’re so with him, it works. It’s exciting and good for the music.

“He’s doing stuff that challenges what a chamber orchestra can do. He appreciates flexibility and openness to change. I’ve seen quite a few principal conductors and hundreds of conductors over my 40 years and he’s definitely the best.”

Now that’s clear, it is possible to persuade King to reminisce a little, and two conductors of earlier in the SCO’s history rate a special mention.

“The Finnish conductor Jukka Pekka Saraste became Principal Conductor not long after I joined, and he was great. He is exactly the same age as me and we got on very well. We did a lot of good touring and recording with him.

“And my idol for many years was Charles Mackerras. We made recordings of the Mozart operas with him and then did concert performances at the Edinburgh Festival. At the beginning of a two-and-a-half week recording project he would spend  ten minutes enthusing about the piece and the original score he’d studied in Prague. He had a tough reputation but he trusted the musicians. I was so lucky to be part of all of that.”

King is from Hertfordshire and, along with his brother, who became a jazz trumpet player, first studied music on Saturday mornings at the Royal Academy in London as a teenager. When he left school he went to the Royal Northern College of Music and, although he was offered postgraduate studies and work with the Manchester Camerata, then elected to stretch his wings with a job in Reykjavik in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Returning to the UK, he was a schoolteacher for a couple of years before applying and winning the job with the SCO. The chamber orchestra has always been a freelance band, however, and like many of his colleagues King has had other work alongside. He led the Quartz string quartet, which grew out of the SCO’s education work and also included Bernard Doherty, once co-leader of the BBC SSO, SCO violinist Lorna McLaren, who also clocked up 40 years before retiring in 2018, and the late Kevin McCrae, composer and SCO principal cello.

And for 24 and half years, King was Director of Music at Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University – encouraging and developing music-making among students and staff at an institution that does not offer music as a course of study. He stood down from that post at the end of 2022 having overseen a response to the pandemic that kept an audience of two and half thousand people online engaged with one another through sharing their “musical moments”.

If that concluded his tenure at the university, he is as proud of the project with which it began, a contemporary music commissioning initiative that produced 60 pieces, from Scotland-based composers and through a competition for unpublished composers working in Scotland. The common inspiration for them all was the Inchcolm Antiphoner, a few pages of early Celtic plainchant from the abbey on the island in the Forth that King can see from his home in Dalgety Bay.

The compositions were workshopped at residential gatherings in Highland Scotland before being performed at Iona Abbey and St Giles Cathedral. That all seems to chime with the Englishman’s enthusiasm for his adopted home – as well as his Fife home, King has a long lease on a bolt-hole on Loch Shiel.

“The cottage is half way down the loch, on the water’s edge, only accessible by boat and completely off-grid. We go there for about 12 weeks of the year: it is a good place to chill, cook and write music. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea but I like the challenge of living there, and the wildlife is amazing.”

Now 67, his quartet and university post may be in the past, but King still conducts the Dunblane Chamber Orchestra, which convenes twice a year for concerts, and he has no plans to leave the SCO.

“I’m loving the SCO too much to think about retiring. If I felt that my playing started to drop a bit, I would drop out, but we’ve had members play well into their 70s. There are only four of us in the violas, so you can’t ride along, you have to be on the ball all the time.”

It is not just the prospect of more concerts with Emelyanychev that keeps him enthused.

“Our current Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld, is one of the best we’ve ever had in that post. He stands out as being exciting, and he communicates well, and it’s good to see him grow. And violinist Pekka Kuusisto is one of those guys who sees music from a different angle. We see him every year and it is something everyone looks forward to.

“I’ve seen a huge amount of change in the orchestra but some of the young players coming in these days are just stunning. We are currently looking for a number two viola and from the five or six we’ve had on trial it is going to be really difficult to choose.”

The SCO’s 50th birthday concerts are at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on Thursday and Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday. Maxim Emelyanychev conducts Elena Langer’s suite from her opera Figaro Gets a Divorce and Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony and plays Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos alongside Dmitry Ablogin.

Picture by Christopher Bowen

SCO / Emelyanychev

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Stirling Castle

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra could not have engineered it, but a remarkable coincidence of featured artists provided principal second violinist Marcus Barcham Stevens with priceless material for his spoken introduction to Tuesday’s programme in the Great Hall of Stirling Castle.

Playing Max Bruch’s rarely heard 1911 Concerto for Clarinet and Viola were the SCO’s Principal Clarinet Maximiliano Martin and Principal Viola Max Mandel. The orchestra was conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev and – just to max-out on Maxes – the work was originally written for the composer’s virtuoso clarinettist son, Max Felix Bruch.

The work itself begins in a mellow fashion. The range of the two solo instruments is so similar that violists play the late works Brahms initially wrote for clarinet, and in the second movement – a very moderate Allegro indeed – Mandell and Martin completed one another’s phrases like an old married couple. The music is, in fact, occasionally reminiscent of Brahms, as well as of Mahler, and the opening fanfare of the brisker finale was sufficiently like Mendelssohn it would have been small surprise to see a bride make her entrance from the back of the hall. Not a neglected masterpiece, then, but a welcome change from the little of the composer’s output we hear all too often.

The concert had begun with the world premiere that has launched the SCO’s 50thanniversary season, Associate Composer Jay Capperauld’s The Origin of Colour, so the second half performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No3 was the first well-known music of the evening. It would, however, have been a treat also to be hearing the Eroica for the first time, as Emelyanychev launched into a bold account of the first movement, achieving a terrific balance of the instruments and losing no detail of the score in what is not always the most forgiving of acoustics.

There was an airiness about the Marcia funebre initially as well, but by its end it had strayed on the wrong side of the line between stately and lying-in-state. Evidently exhilarating to play for, the SCO’s Principal Conductor usually finds the ideal combination of scale and pace in bringing the lessons of historically-informed performance to the podium, but his tempi did not seem quite so assured here. Although the Scherzo came out of the trap like a hare, he subsequently gave the horns rather more space than they wanted for their hunting calls. Happily conductor and players were on firmer ground in the rhapsodic variations of the Finale.

If the Beethoven was not a complete triumph, Capperauld’s new work assuredly is. In some respects it is quite conventional stuff from a young composer whose catalogue so far is impressive in its eclecticism. The opening of percussive effects across the orchestra giving way to a chorale of winds is a well-marked path, and the blend of melody and orchestration that follows is close kin to Aaron Copland, which is a high bar to reach.

Subsequently there are moments that call to mind Leonard Bernstein and John Adams, which is to say that this musical evocation of colour coming into the world is very colourful indeed for almost its entire duration. Few are the contemporary works that you’d put good money on hearing again on a regular basis, but The Origin of Colour sounds very like a racing certainty.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Jay Capperauld by Euan Robertson

SCO / Maxim’s Eroica

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City Halls, Glasgow

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has opened its Golden Jubilee season with a bullish programme geared to speak proudly and confidently of this milestone achievement, but also, one might add, of a future that will surely be shaped with the completion, now in sight, of its new purpose-built Edinburgh home, the long-awaited Dunard Centre. 

In the here and now, and in a packed Glasgow City Halls on Thursday, the celebratory atmosphere was palpable. Billed as “Maxim’s Eroica”, Beethoven’s (even now) mind-blowing Third Symphony was the destination point. But before that there was the promise of an epic Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto from the pile-driving Russian-American pianist Kirill Gerstein, and the latest new work from the SCO’s current associate composer, New Cumnock-born Jay Capperauld.

“Maxim”, of course, refers to the orchestra’s hot-rod principal conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev. Only the uninitiated might have expected an off-the-shelf Eroica from this tantalising and unpredictable Russian. This one was a customised flyer, an Eroica supercharged in a way that stripped away the corrosive layers of successive performance traditions to reveal the absolute purity of Beethoven, the sharpness of the drama, the visionary essence of the turbulent and fearless personality, all built around an unshakeable, faithfully preserved chassis.

The detail and insight were extraordinary, extracted with a natural empathy for the possibilities Beethoven presents: a naturally-crafted elasticity in the sculpting of phrases that never once rocked the music’s inevitable flow; a slow movement – the Marcia funebre – as impressive for its lyrical sweetness and chamber-like intimacy as its measured rigidity; a Scherzo touched more by spirited refinement than the typical race-to-the-finish; and an utterly self-assured Finale, free of bombast, rich in expressive substance and directional focus.

It was the perfect counterpoint to Capperauld’s concert opener, the glistening surreal sound world of The Origin of Colour, commissioned by the SCO for this programme, and based on Italo Calvino’s short story, Without Colours, from his speculative fiction series Cosmicomics. It imagines the concept of a grey-only world suddenly and frighteningly transformed by the creation of colour.

Colour is the driving factor in Capperauld’s dizzying score – a wild, effervescent tapestry of instrumental polyphony arising from primitive percussive and vocalised utterances, driven to its delirious, sometimes whimsical, heights by virile rhythmic ostinati. There’s a whiff of minimalism that heightens the mystique, and a starry opulence – gloriously captured in this performance – that suggests Capperauld could easily turn his hand to the ways of Hollywood soundtracks.

Where Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concert No 1 might have been anticipated as a sure-fire winner, this performance by Gerstein – using Tchaikovsky’s original version rather than the more familiar revised posthumous edition – was more unnerving than satisfying. The opening movement, despite the uncommon charm of the opening piano chords served up as arpeggios,  never really settled, Gerstein lost in his own combative world, heavy handed and over-peddling, as if Storm Agnes was still with us. 

If the ensuing movements offered more in the way of lyrical eloquence and a crisper meeting of minds, the underlying turbulence never quite receded. All of which was a pity, given the exceptional and sensitive playing from the SCO. 

The second leg in this 50th Anniversary season opening tour travels to Stirling (Tuesday), Ayr (Wednesday) and Aberdeen (Saturday), in which the Tchaikovsky is replaced by Bruch’s rarely-heard Concerto for Clarinet and Viola. VoxCarnyx’s Keith Bruce will be there to review it.

Ken Walton 

RSNO / Sondergard

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Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

The vicissitudes of Covid (specifically me catching it) meant taking the digital streaming route to the closing concert of the RSNO season, and that proved to have its compensations, if it was still a poor substitute for being present in the hall.

These revolved around the new work in the programme, Our Gilded Veins, Jay Capperauld’s concerto for the orchestra’s popular first flute, Katherine Bryan. Not only does the concert footage available online come with an introduction to the work by the composer, the performance is followed by reflections on it by the soloist – all very helpful with a brand new work.

Helpful, but not absolutely essential, because this is a very approachable piece that may well be the one to lift the young composer another few rungs up the ladder of international recognition. Only the very finest flautists will be technically equipped to play it, but all the best ones will surely want to add it to a concerto repertoire that is far from extensive.

Postponed because of the pandemic, Capperauld and Bryan have been working together on the piece for more than five years and that shows in the maturity of the writing for orchestra and soloist, and the way it is tailored to her voice. There is little that is fey and wistful in Bryan’s rich tone – she wants her instrument to be competing with the strings, brass and percussion for solo attention, and Our Gilded Veins is all about turning deficiencies and limitations into attributes.

The composer’s plan of the concerto may be that it journeys from sharp-edged fragments to ensemble unity – a percussive climax followed by a sequence of musical dawns on the lower register of the flute and then the whole orchestra – but Capperauld’s cacophony is still melodious and his resolutions far from placid, even a little bit funky.

While Our Gilded Veins is a terrific showpiece for the soloist, it is also a demanding work for the orchestra in its different rhythmic pulses and has some magnificent widescreen string and brass writing.

Once scheduled as a season-opener, the concerto came to rest in the season finale company of Beethoven’s Choral symphony, in which the RSNO Chorus were on especially strong form, most singing from memory, and the sopranos producing a united ensemble in those top notes from the start.

To my ears the four soloists – Eleanor Dennis, Stephanie Maitland, Benjamin Hulett and Bozidar Smiljanic – did not blend as well as one might like, but the bass-baritone began the Ode to Joy in superb robust style.

Conductor Thomas Sondergard had given an early indication of the crisp, sharp style of playing he wanted from the orchestra in the opening of Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture, which began the orchestra’s programme, and that was especially evident in the symphony’s epic Scherzo movement.

The concert was prefaced by the RSNO’s contribution to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in a solo performance of Diu Regnare (Long to reign), a pipe tune commissioned from Stuart Liddell for the occasion and played here by Finlay MacDonald. Apparently the short piece was played a remarkable 5000 times around the world last weekend.

Keith Bruce

Concert available online until June 30: rsno.org.uk

Picture: Katherine Bryan

Letting The Cracks Show

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Jay Capperauld’s new flute concerto is a Japanese repair job, but it represents a positive healing process, he tells KEN WALTON

For Jay Capperauld, Christmas has come early. It’s only a matter of weeks since the RSNO performed the 33-year-old up-and-coming Ayrshire composer’s Fèin-Aithne, written originally for the BBC SSO, alongside Strauss’ monumental Alpine Symphony. Last week, the SCO announced that for the next four years he is to succeed Anna Clyne as its associate composer. This weekend, his new flute concerto, Our Gilded Veins, is premiered by the RSNO and its principal flautist, Katherine Bryan.

When we spoke, the SCO announcement was still under wraps, but there was a pent-up excitement in Capperauld’s manner that suggested something big was in the offing. “I can’t say at the moment,” he blurted cautiously, clearly wishing he could.

We’d met to discuss Our Gilded Veins, a work that began life pre-pandemic, was duly postponed from its planned 2020 premiere, underwent subsequent refashioning during lockdown, and will now emerge in its freshly-minted form this week under the baton of RSNO music director Thomas Søndergård and in the exalted company of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 

Anyone who has followed Capperauld’s upward trajectory since graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland will appreciate to what extent extra-musical inspirations – often surreal, often funny, always potent – are a defining feature of his music. “I generally always write to a concept. I rarely work in absolute abstract terms,” he says. Our Gilded Veins is no exception.

The title refers to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, “a tradition whereby you break a plate or a bowl, then put it back together using gilded lacquer in order to highlight the breakage, as if you are celebrating the history of the object, warts and all,” he explains. “To me that’s just a delicious metaphor for the human condition, especially after what we’ve all been through over the last couple of years.”

“Kintsugi has been a hugely positive influence on me, in the sense it allows you to perceive things you’ve gone through, those bad experiences, in a positive way and not cover things up. The biggest step forward in the past five years or so is that we’re able to talk about mental health. It’s visible in the same way as the ‘gilded veins’ on these objects. It leads to conversations that need to happen.”

The “conversation” explored in Our Gilded Veins had already taken root in a previous piece for solo flute, The Pathos of Broken Things, which itself acted as the prototype for the concerto. Both stemmed from his encounter with Katherine Bryan. Impressed by a work Capperauld had had performed as a participant in the RSNO’s 2015/16 inaugural Composers’ Hub scheme, Bryan had later sought him out and asked if he had written any flute music. The answer was no, but he immediately set about composing one, which led in turn to the concerto commission.

Revisiting a work is not unusual for Capperauld. He did so for last month’s RSNO performance of Fèin-Aithne, rewriting around half of it, and he’s done the same for Our Gilded Veins. “The pandemic played a part in the nature of these revisions. It was, for me compositionally, an opportunity to spring clean. It also made complete sense as both pieces are about self-identity, and my perception of myself had changed significantly during that period.”

That’s reflected  in the altered narrative. “That now starts at a place where trauma has just happened. In the original version, we were seeing it unfold and transpire over the entire narrative. So there’s a fractured sense to the music straightaway, where the lines are unconnected. The whole first half of the piece is now about those lines trying to find each other, gluing themselves together, so we can then explore what that positive aspect of Kintsugi implies. By the end we revisit the trauma material, but in a new and reassuring harmonic context.”

Another key factor in the ongoing evolution of the piece has been Capperauld’s creative dialogue with Bryan. As she herself says, “Jay got to know me well during the process as a player: that I like to tell stories; that I love big-hitting, powerful stuff; that I like the emotional drive behind a piece that I can really talk to an audience with. He must have thought I liked a big challenge. This piece is so hard, but breaking through those challenges really enhances it.”

Katherine Bryan: “I love big-hitting, powerful stuff”

With so much original music excised in the revision process, does it just go in the bin? “No,” insists Capperauld. “I hang on to absolutely everything. I learned that from Harrison Birtwistle, whose advice to young composers was ‘keep everything’. There might be something you’re working on that you don’t have a context for at the time, but years down the line you find one. So who knows, maybe some scraps from the old version will find their way into a new piece of music at some point.”

Meantime, Our Gilded Veins – which Bryan and Capperauld will also be utilising in an outreach project at the Kibble Educational and Care Centre in Paisley – is partnering Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture and the Choral Symphony in this week’s close-of-season concert by the RSNO. How daunting is that?

“Hugely,” says Capperauld. “Knowing that was very scary, but all I can do is focus on the matter in hand. I’d be foolish to think that because my piece is being performed alongside Beethoven Nine I must try to express myself to that same level, cos that ain’t gonna happen! I can’t make that judgement call as a composer. That’s for the audience to decide. All I can do is my best work.”

Katherine Bryan and the RSNO premiere Jay Capperauld’s Our Gilded Veins at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh (3 March) and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (4 March). Full details at www.rsno.org.uk

SCO / MacMillan

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City Halls, Glasgow

Those familiar with the work of young Ayrshire composer Jay Capperauld will recognise that he finds inspiration in his eclectic taste in other, non-music related, art, often with a scientific dimension.

That tendency may explain his new work for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the culmination of a concert programme conducted by his mentor, Sir James MacMillan, but it doesn’t make the journey to his composition, Death in a Nutshell, any less bonkers.

The well-to-do American Frances Glessner Lee was a pioneer of forensics as a route to solving crime, and as a teaching aid she created little models of real crime scenes, like rooms in a doll’s house of death. The clues to the mystery are all in the little dioramas, of which the focal point is the corpse.

Exhibited at the Smithsonian a few years ago, Capperauld has taken six of them and created a 20-minute suite of soundtracks to the macabre pictures, which were helpfully reproduced in the SCO’s online programme, with a fat caption beneath outlining each case.

Which is all very curious and fascinating of course, but what about the music? I’ll go out on a limb and say that Capperauld’s colourful composition could happily be enjoyed without any knowledge of the background to Death in a Nutshell, although any listener would guess that there is something cinematic going on, especially if they are also watching the players.

Opening movement Malleus Dei (in the Parsonage Parlour) had percussionist Louise Goodwin wield a steel claw-hammer down upon a sheet of metal, and she and her section associate Ally Kelly were kept on the move throughout the work, on every form of tuned instrument, bass drum, blocks and tom-toms, a full kit and a selection of empty bottles. For the final movement Hanging upon your every word (in the Attic) they were joined by their neighbours in the trumpets on paper-shuffling duties.

There was also a full range of sinister effects required of the strings, as well as delineating every step in the fourth movement’s Interlude pour l’esprit de l’escalier (on the Stairs). The kit and the bottles featured in the preceding A Drowned Sorrow (in the Dark Bathroom), which was dominated by the bluesy alto sax of Capperauld’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland associate Lewis Banks, whose instrument was integral elsewhere in the score, alongside William Stafford’s bass clarinet and Alison Green’s contrabassoon.

Sir James was all over every detail of this, ensuring a performance that understandably had the composer beaming when he took his bow. For the sort of musician who enjoys the challenge of new music, it also looked enormous fun and that infectious enthusiasm transferred easily to the audience.

The skill of Capperauld’s orchestration was particularly appreciable because of the company it was keeping in following a reverse chronological journey through Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

Think of any of these works and it is big string chords that come first to mind, but the other elements are just as crucial: the horns, wind ensemble and solo oboe in the Idyll, En Hudson’s harp in the Mahler and Peter Franks’ trumpet, high in the choir stalls and the vibrant wind quartet in the Ives.

Keith Bruce

SEVEN HILLS: St Mary’s / Capperauld

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Stockbridge Church, Edinburgh

More than most schools in Scotland, the pressure last term was on St Mary’s Music School to get its music performance function back on track at the earliest opportunity. That’s primarily what the specialist Edinburgh music establishment exists for, so Covid restrictions were an especial concern. 

Resilience, determination, ingenuity and ambition paid off, and this end of session concert, now online, is a glorious musical achievement in the harshest of times. Central to it is the premiere of Ayrshire composer Jay Capperauld’s Theory of the Earth, the first of seven unfolding commissions by the school designed to celebrate its upcoming 50th anniversary in 2023.

The number seven is key. In hatching the project the school’s director of music Paul Stubbings sought to connect the school to the community by taking Edinburgh’s seven hills and poems by Alexander McCall Smith as the inspiration for the new chamber works, and for related activity that would align with St Mary’s expanding outreach initiatives. Besides the seven commissions, Sir James MacMillan will write a major celebratory work for orchestra and choir.

Meanwhile, Capperauld’s latest premiere marks the start of the process from a public perspective, and a highly impressive achievement it is. Written for string quartet, piano and percussion, Theory of the Earth is performed by mostly students under the direction of head of strings, Valerie Pearson. The inspiration is McCall Smith’s poem Arthur’s Seat and Geology, who reads it prior to the performance.

As for the resulting music, Capperauld has latched on to the poet’s reference to James Hutton, the 18th century founder of modern geology, who confirmed, especially through his analysis of Arthur’s Seat, that the earth’s geological evolution was a constant process of renewal and decay over millions of years – “no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end”. In doing so he debunked traditional religious notions. 

Capperauld responds with a piece that seems as timeless as it is contained. From a single, insistent note on piano vying motifs emerge, some nostalgically modal, others more abstract and ethereal. The combined result is almost statuesque, an invigorating minimalist mix of movement and stasis. 

It’s a language these young players easily understand and are technically on top of. They negotiate its variable aleatoric elements with unflinching confidence, and are persuasive in shaping the big picture, with its gradual build to biting climax and ultimate evaporation. If this is the bench mark for the ensuing commissions, it will be quite a collection.
Ken Walton

Available to view at https://vimeo.com/577725596/4d207a3f83