“They really went for it full on, you got everything you wanted and hoped to hear, but it was never over the top…..terrific playing…..quite something!”

Editorial Rating:  4 Stars:  Nae Bad

The RSNO’s Friday night Edinburgh concerts really set you up for the weekend, and last Friday’s cornucopia of delights was eagerly awaited: Bartok and Stravinsky, an orgy of brass, dissonance and full on orchestral razzmatazz. We were not disappointed.

There was much in the plots that drove the ballet suite parts of the programme that was descriptive writing of the louche – if not actually sordid – kind, not to mention the fecund. Robbers setting up a young girl as bait, consent to coition in order to effect the death of the punter, and Spring as the enduring symbol not just of birth, but of fertility, and finally the sacrifice of a virgin to appease, one suspects, not only the Gods but also senile and jealous Elders. No wonder the performances as ballets caused such a stir in the early part of the twentieth century.

First off was Bartok’s Suite from the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin. As for the story, Google it for all the gory details, but suffice it to say the premiere in Cologne in 1926 (conducted by none less than the composer Erno Dohnanyi) caused catcalls, whistles, boos, stamping and a walk out by the clergy present, with the work being banned in a number of cities. Nothing could do more to promote the piece. As for the music, well, exciting is not a strong enough word, and what impressed me is how the band got into the groove of this really quite demanding work straight away: dissonant, chaotic, resemblant of street life, some pointers to Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. The lilting, seductive melodies supplanted by raucous, glorious trombones and brass in general, with the strings coming in at the end and taking us away like furies. Wow! A great start to the evening, twenty minutes of exquisite bombast.

There followed Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto played by Spanish violinist Leticia Moreno on a 1762 Gagliano. The Concerto as a musical form is often compared as either a contest or a love affair between soloist and orchestra, with early examples (e.g. Vivaldi) featuring the soloist as first among equals, and later composers taking the soloist more out front. This latter approach is inherently more difficult with instruments such as the violin and guitar that find it difficult through volume limitations to stand out as a piano or trumpet would, and this limitation is the more obvious in later, more heavily orchestrated works, of which the Stravinsky is certainly one. Only in the second and final movements did the soloist really come to the fore, with a lightly supported melody in the second, and a lively toccata in the fourth enabling her to do so. Elsewhere conductor Thomas Sondergard was doing what he could to restrain the orchestra without rendering them inaudible. This also resulted in too soft playing from the clarinet so unfortunately the performance as a whole of this underestimated, supposedly austere work never quite satisfied. The audience nonetheless delighted in it and sent the players off to the interval with enthusiastic applause ringing in their ears.

The last work of the evening was Stravinsky’s  The Rite of Spring, a brilliant choice of programming given the glorious Spring day that was now drawing to a close. The playing here was absolutely first class with spectacularly clear and well articulated woodwind – not at all outdone by the “heavier” brass – playing with real clean attack and verve; but by the time the work was over you knew that everyone in the 105 piece band had had their moment in the sun, from the ten timpani, three huge Wagner tubas, seven trumpets, eight horns, washboard, rattle, tam-tam etc. – get it? The strings soared gloriously and one was reminded that, as is so often the case, although this sounded like it was chaotic, it is in fact a highly structured, cleverly orchestrated work that raised the roof and actually caused a riot when it premiered in Paris in 1913. One hundred years on its excitement and sheer jaw-dropping daring nature does not pale and the RSNO gave the sort of performance a seasoned concertgoer loves. They really went for it full-on and you got everything you wanted and hoped to hear, but it was never over the top. Terrific playing with the structure and discipline that strong composition enables. Quite something!

Reviewer: Charles Stokes (Seen 6 May)

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“The quality of the playing was at a consistently high standard throughout.”

Editorial Rating:  4 Stars:  Nae Bad

A cold wet sleety January afternoon did not deter the hardy Edinburgh cognoscenti from gathering eagerly and loudly in the foyer of the Usher Hall on Sunday.  The Hall’s Twitter feed had advised  the 250 or so who had arranged to pick up their tickets from the box office to come early because of demand.  To begin with this certainly stopped the ticket queue from standing in the rain, and one got the impression the queue wouldn’t have minded anyway, but by 2.45pm the line was well out of the doors.

The draw was, of course, The Academy of Saint Martin In The Fields, perhaps the finest chamber orchestra in the world, now undergoing a new lease of life under the directorship of player/conductor Joshua Bell, subway busker and near megastar. Bell was certainly a brilliant catch for this magnificent band after Sir Neville Marriner’s retirement four years ago.

The other huge name on the bill was cellist Steven Isserlis, again, world class in stature.  The combined group are on a UK and European Tour, and it was Edinburgh’s turn to hear the magic.

The programme selection was both esoteric and matinee attractive.  The concert was relatively short, at a total of less than an hour and a half’s playing time, but nobody left feeling they had been short changed.  In art, as perhaps in matters of the heart, it is not so much the duration, but the intensity of the experience that provides the enduring memory.

The programme began with a snippet by Dvorak, “Silent Woods”, originally  “Waldesruhe”, a piece for piano for four hands, later transcribed for cello, and ultimately for cello and orchestra, which was the version we heard. Quiet, gentle, soothing, with flavours, understandably, of Smetana’s Ma Vlast, one wondered whether this lullaby-like jewel, played with such beguiling ease, would send the postprandial audience to sleep.

If it did (and the enthusiastic applause suggested otherwise) the blast of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony would have them wide awake in no time.  This is not a great symphony, and apart from the lively Allegro vivace con brio, which the orchestra delivered in cracking form, the remaining three movements (a comment on the composition, not the playing), save for a spirited final Allegro vivace, plodded along a little.

After the interval we were treated to the second movement from Schumann’s posthumously published violin concerto,  along with a tiny but fascinating codetta written by Benjamin Britten.  Ten minutes of understated, beautiful playing, with Bell the absolute master of his art.

The concert ended with the “must have” item, the Brahms Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra. What followed was secure, utterly capable ensemble playing with the two soloists interweaving with each other as warp and weft.  There was none of the stodginess you sometimes get in Brahm’s full on orchestration with the band moving nimbly through the familiar passages in support of the soloists.

Overall, not only did this concert have eminent soloists and an interesting programme, the quality of the playing was at a consistently high standard throughout.  At the time of their foundation 55 years ago, Sir Neville Marriner promised that the Academy would never go on stage unless thoroughly rehearsed.  True today as it was then, what we got was  not so much a concert as a performance, in the truest and fullest sense of the word.

Reviewer: Charles Stokes (Seen 10 January)

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