Tag Archives: Ryan Corbett

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

Orcadian Feast

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Resourcefulness and imagination have never been so important in keeping events like the St Magnus Festival alive, its director Alasdair Nicolson tells KEN WALTON.

How many of us remember the perverse pleasure of the popular afternoon TV programme Ready, Steady Cook, where contestants challenged celebrity chefs to concoct a feast out of random ingredients purchased for a mere fiver? Despite such meagre resources, creativity and resourcefulness took flight, appetising results emerged. 

To some extent, that’s how Alasdair Nicolson has approached this year’s St Magnus Festival, the event he has directed for the past 12 years, and which is, he admits, still weathering the after-effects of Covid. “Right now, as things gradually return to normal, we’re having to be especially resourceful,” he insists. 

“There’s no overarching theme this year. The programme is more about a set of things I think are interesting, or a set of people I know – emerging artists or old friends – who are very good. Last year we were nearly back from Covid, but it was still odd. This year feels we’re getting there, still not at full capacity, but doing well with ticket sales.

A quick glance at the programme, which runs from 16-23 June, shows that the ingredients are infinitely more exciting than any arbitrary cucumber or carrot. The meat of the festival is still classical music, but complementing that are folk, ballet, theatre, poetry and visual arts events, with the traditional involvement of local performers offsetting the incoming presence of visiting artists.

As ever, Nicolson eschews the predictable. What is it with the accordion this year, I ask in relation to what seems like a veritable squeeze-box infestation, dominated by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s entire Accordion Ensemble? “I’m just a lover of the accordion,” he says. “As a composer, I’ve written for it in various combinations. I also taught a composition course for accordion in Lithuania. So, personally, I have skin in the game.”

Central to this major segment of programming is Scotland’s latest accordion sensation, the young Glaswegian Ryan Corbett. Following his solo triumph last year in Orkney, and his fast-rising profile further afield, he’s here this time in two duo partnerships, one with Edinburgh-born trumpeter Aaron Akugbo, the other with his own teacher Djordje Gajic playing Stravinsky’s Petrouchka in St Magnus Cathedral.

If that isn’t quirky enough, the charismatic Ragazze Quartet from the Netherlands, known for their unconventional approach to the medium, certainly are. Nicolson encountered them while sitting in his car. “I was driving and listening to the radio when I heard them playing Schubert’s Die Winterreise and thought, this is wonderful, but it’s not supposed to be on string quartet. It worked so well in refocussing Schubert’s original [song cycle].” The Raggaze will be joined in this by baritone Maarten Koningsberger. 

In another of their three programmes, the Quartet teams up with Dutch pianist Nikola Meeuwsen in Shostakovich’s ebullient Piano Quintet. Again, the idea came to Nicolson through chance. “His parents in Holland live next door to friends of mine, who told me about him. I tried him out and realised putting him together with the other Dutch musicians made complete sense.” Meeuwsen, still only 20 and the youngest ever winner of Amsterdam’s Grachtenfestival Prize, also plays his own solo recital, the Age of Refinement, on Saturday. 

Other artists this year include: the 17th/18th century specialist ensemble Florilegium, reenacting in one of its programmes Leipzig’s legendary Coffee House concerts with music by Bach and his contemporaries; and the Scots-based Hebrides Ensemble, including an “immersive promenade concert” “Solstice of Dark and Light – Wind Water Earth Fire” in St Magnus Cathedral, combining music, art and poetry.

Atmosphere plays its part, too, in two solo performances by the young Black Isle cellist Finlay Spence: one on Hoy in which he plays Bach, Boyle, Beamish and Berio; the other on South Ronaldsay which includes the world premiere of a new commission, Fadhail, by Uist composer Padruig Morrison. 

On a larger scale, Scottish Ballet brings its steamy, critically-acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire to Kirkwall’s Pickaquoy Centre. “We had to ask them to bring another show as well, given that Streetcar comes with a high guidance rating,” Nicolson explains. “Otherwise, I’d have had to field the complaints!” The solution was Nutcracker Sweets, a potpourri from past and present Scottish Ballet productions culminating in scenes from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

Equally exciting for Nicolson is the world premiere of Thora, David McNeish’s new play based on the mother of Magnus mentioned in the ancient sagas, directed by Gerda Stevenson. McNeish was a minister on Orkney and before that a doctor. “He worked on it originally when [Orcadian actor, theatre director and vocal coach] Kristin Linklater was still alive, and it was really meant for her,” Nicolson says. “It’s a powerful piece because it brings a woman into the Magnus story, and one who actually survived him.”

Ask the St Magnus director what makes the Festival tick today, seven years after the death of its iconic founder Sir Peter Maxwell Davies  and especially after the trials of Covid, and the answer falls somewhere between pragmatism and optimism. “If anything, we’re much more aware of how much everything costs. The challenge is to match the expectations people have from the Festival’s traditions and history against what is really possible. 

“The fact is, we’re still managing to do a largely music-based festival, trying to bring in things local people ought to see as well as setting out stuff that will bring audiences in from elsewhere. Most importantly Orkney folk themselves are still an integral element.” This year’s Johnsmas Foy – Waves and Tangles: A Countrywoman’s Diary – celebrates Orcadian poet and nature writer Bessie Skea, whose legacy was overshadowed by her more famous contemporary George Mackay Brown. The local Festival Chorus presents its own performance of Fauré’s Requiem under Hallè Chorus director Matthew Hamilton.

Times might be tougher, but with just the right ingredients and some creative flair St Magnus is making the best of uncertain times.

The 2023 St Magnus Festival on Orkney runs from 16-23 June. Full information at http://www.stmagnusfestival.co

Music at Paxton

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Paxton House, by Berwick

Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire of Scotland alumnus Ryan Corbett recently became the first player of the accordion to join the BBC’s career-making New Generation Artists scheme, and it is also true that “box” players are a rare sight in the Picture Gallery of Paxton House, the splendid principal venue for the returned Music at Paxton Summer Festival of Chamber Music in the Borders.

The very handsome Italian instrument played by the young man from Milngavie made an impressive noise under the glass cupola of the portrait-and-landscape-lined room, as he spanned centuries of music composed for much larger keyboards as well as his own.

The Bach Prelude & Fugue and Scarlatti Sonata with which he began displayed that range, as well his own remarkable virtuosity. I am not clear how it is possible to achieve the variation in voice, as well as tone and dynamics, we heard in his approach to music written for organ and piano, but it was certainly audible. And the visual advantage of the front-facing accordion is that his remarkably dextrous technique could not have been easier to admire.

His arrangements of Tchaikovsky’s Romance in F Minor and Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso also made familiar music very fresh, the latter sounding as if it were written for the instrument, and the former acquiring a flavour of the Left Bank in Paris.

French composer Franck Angelis also featured in the recital, his Etude adapting a theme of Astor Piazzolla. The Argentinian master’s influence could be heard in the third movement of the Sonata No 1 for accordion by Alexander Nagaev, although the first shared rhythms with Meade Lux Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues and the second the dramatic atmosphere of Phantom of the Opera.

Corbett’s encore of Semionov’s Don Rhapsody also came from the school of contemporary Russian composition for the instrument, but the most fascinating recent work in the programme was Czech Jindrich Feld’s Konzertstuck, from 1974 and an exploration of the technical limits of the accordion with contrasting spare moments.

Corbett was back on stage at the end of Sunday afternoon, as a guest of the Maxwell Quartet, joining in arrangements of traditional music from Lewis and Shetland that concluded the versatile group’s three year tenure as Music at Paxton’s resident group.

Festival Director Angus Smith was quite clear that he intends to invite them back, but the programme they performed was the perfect conclusion to that relationship. Haydn’s Opus 77 No 2 Quartet in F is the sort of repertoire at which the Maxwell excels, ensemble balance perfect from the start, rhythmic phrases passed round with glee in the second movement, as was the Andante melody, which is Haydn at his loveliest.

It is a surprisingly rare phenomenon – print production schedules being a factor – but the Paxton programme note perfectly matched the group’s performance of Brahms’ 1876 String Quartet No 3, and had the quotes from the composer to match their approach.

As with the Haydn, the slow movement is the most Brahmsian of Brahms, but throughout the piece the players found a lightness of touch that distinguished the performance, especially in the musical playfulness of the third movement and the finale. Not even a short hiatus to rectify a tuning problem with George Smith’s violin disturbed their flow.

The party-piece of this fond “adieu” was a selection from Roxanna Panufnik’s collaboration with poet Wendy Cope, “The Audience”. In singer and broadcaster Jamie MacDougall the quartet had the perfect collaborator for this comic dissection of the theatre of chamber music performance. MacDougall wisely did not labour the rhymes in the text with a characterful delivery of Cope’s storyline, introducing us to the musicians, the critic, the couple on a first date and the interval drinker. Panufnik’s music is as witty in its own style, and as – I think – the only working scribe in this audience, I’ll take her sonic depiction of the anguished crafting of these words over Cope’s cynicism any day!

Keith Bruce