Sally Beamish premiere, SCO

On Saturday, Edinburgh saw the UK premiere of Sally Beamish's percussion concerto performed at the Queen's Hall by Colin Currie with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who are a co-commissioner of the work. Appropriately for the season of Lent, it was a meditation on the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins, taking the form of a series of 'dances' in different styles. These with their contrasting styles showcase effectively the wide range of percussion instruments deftly and energetically used by the soloist. Some humorous touches feature, such as the use of bottle chimes in 'Gluttony'. A tango used in 'Envy', the second of the seven dance sections, is particularly enjoyable.

These dance sequences are briefly preceded by an opening section featuring flute along with the percussion soloist, the music from this opening returns briefly to be re-stated in a closing section, described as being as if a sleeper awakes from a dream, the dream being the central series of dances. The flute has a demanding part at several points and Fiona Paterson is to be commended for her performance of this. Woodwind is generally emphasised in the scoring, the clarinet also being featured effectively in the passage for 'Pride', subtitled 'Cadenza No 5'. Ms Beamish honoured the audience with a personal appearance and her work received a standing ovation.

The second half of the evening saw an able performance of Beethoven's 7th symphony, a work which conductor Joseph Swensen has made an especial study of. Swensen is a former Principal Conductor of the SCO and it was interesting to compare their sound under his baton with that of his successor, Robin Ticciati. Although Ticciati is taking on new commitments as Music Director at Glyndebourne, he will be remaining Principal Conductor of the SCO until at least 2015. Not only areb there opportunities to hear their very successful collaboration during this year's Edinburgh  International Festival but we are told they will be making several further performances together in the 2012/13 concert seas, details of which will be announced very shortly

SCO's Beethoven performances continue this Thursday (22nd March) with the Fifth (under Ticciati) and on April 21st with the Eighth (under Oliver Knussen, who also conducts his own Two Organa and a new work). Both concerts are to be given in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, on consecutive days.

by Julie Williams
Photo : Ashley Coombes

Edinburgh International Festival 2012 - Big on Baroque

As regular readers have seen Scotland has a special place on this site! So a look at the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. It's not quite as eclectic this year, but equally esoteric, with a strong emphasis on the baroque.

The Big Event, on opening night 10/8, is Frederick Delius  A Mass of Life. It's billed as "one of the grandest choral pieces ever written" (well?) and is so rarely performed that even snotty Sassenachs should head north for it. (though it's almost certain to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3). Note, it's a "mass of life" not "for" life because it's based on Nietzsche not on Christianity per se. Andrew Davis conducts the Royal National Scottish Orchestra. This is Delius's biggest and most dramatic moment - read lots more about him on this site.

Stick around for Janáček The Makropulos Case. It's a new production, from Opera North, but being heard first at Edinburgh, and only later tours ON's usual cities, so this is a big deal, too. It gives Opera North international, high profile coverage. Who knows, we might even get it in London, where the last few ON productions did not get critical acclaim. Ylva Kihlberg sings Emilia Marty, Richard Farnes conducts and Tom Cairns directs. Wagner Tristan und Isolde too, with Ben Heppner and Jennifer Wilson, but this isn't a "first" like the Opera North Janáček but one which will premiere in Cardiff with the Welsh National Opera.

By far the biggest highlight, though, will be Marc-Antoine Charpentier David et Jonathas. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants and a  superb mainly French cast (Quintans, Charbonneau) almost guarantee this will be an artistic triumph. Staged by Andreas Homoki, it's a new production, jointly commissioned with the Aix en Provence Festival, Opéra Comique, Théâtre de Caen and Teatro Real. Tristan und Isolde and The Makropulos Case  may be popular but real opera devotees will red letter Charpentier and Christie 17-20/8.  Certainly, I'd rather top quality something I don't know than ordinary familiar. Les Arts Florissantes are also doing another very special concert on 19/8 with excerpts from French baroque operas - Lully, Rameau, Charpentier but also Grabu and Cambert. Down south, the Royal Opera House is reviving 19th century French opera : prepare by coming to terms with French baroque.

Philippe Herreweghe will bring the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées and Collegium Vocale Ghent to Edinburgh on 20/9 in a programme built around Bruckner's Te Deum. Plenty more for baroque fans. Philippe Pierlot and The Ricercar Consort will gve two concerts of English baroque - Blow, Purcell, Byrd and Tye. Voice people will head for the recital with Blaze, and Mena, also on 20/8 (presumably daytime and evening with Les Arts Flo, which makes a short trip feasible)  David Daniels is doing a  baroque recital on 29/9 and Iestyn Davies on 18/9. Countertenor Paradise! Harry Christophers and The Sixteen are doing Purcell King Arthur on 27/8.

Vladimir Jurowski brings the London Philharmonic Orchestra to Edinburgh on 14/8. Designed around Rachmanininov's The Bells, it includes rarities by Myaskovsky, Schedrin and Denisov. It's a much more adventurous programme than most of what we've heard at the South Bank, so again it's one Londoners could learn from.

The backbone of the Festival will be visting orchestras like Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra (Lutoslawski). No prizes for guessing who'll feature in this year's Proms! Londoners probably won't flock to hear Gergiev and the LSO or Salonen and the Philharmonia because we can hear them all the time. But much more interest in Scottish specialities like the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Ticciati). Also, Scottish composer Craig Armstrong's opera The Lady from the Sea.

Of even greater interest to Londoners, (alas, we're insular) are the chamber operas. Huw Watkin's In a  Locked Room and Stuart Macrae's Ghost Patrol  form a double bill, to be heard in Edinburgh from 30/8 then at ROH2 in London from 27/9. Also, James Macmillan's Clemency. This was a joint venture between the Royal Opera House (Linbury) where it premiered in May 2011, the Scottish Opera, and the Boston Lyric Opera. Notice the links between the different companies and also with Music Theatre Wales (joint proiducers of the Watkins/Macrae double bill). Anyone who's been paying attention to the content of the new Royal Opera House programme will have picked up on the pattern - co-operation, joint ventures, cross fertilization. This is a good way to go in difficult times. The ROH is miles bigger than all the others, but ivory tower is not nearly as creative as working with lively independents. Incidentally, Peter Maxwell Davies, honorary Scotsman's early opera The Lighthouse is coming to ROH2 in October. That premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1980. Entirely coincidentally, it's about events in a lighthouse, but not quite like Armstrong's The Lady from the Sea.

Read more on the Edinburgh International Festival's website. Public bookings start 24/3.

photo copyright  2005 David Monniaux

The Nash Ensemble, Edinburgh

The Wigmore Hall's resident Nash Ensemble graced Edinburgh for the closing concert of the New Town Concert Society's 2011/12 series. Their programme opened with James Macmillan's 2007 Quintet for Horn and String Quartet, continuing the horn-featuring programming the Edinburgh concert scene has seen this season. This work shares the sound world of Macmillan's widely acclaimed large scale work, Tuireadh, a lament for the Piper Alpha disaster, but is for smaller forces. It also showcases the hunting and military aspects of the horn's character as an instrument, contrasting these with passages for various of the players suggesting a keening lament, further referencing Tuireadh. Of these latter sections, an extended solo for the viola – here ably performed by Lawrence Power, who featured in last week's performance here with the Scottish Ensemble – stand out and is one of the most delightful passages in the entire work.

Although the Macmillan piece was both interesting and enjoyable, for me the highlight of the evening was a sensitive and evocative performance of Brahms's lovely Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano (Op40), another work again featuring the French horn. This also shares with Macmillan's quintet the feeling of an orchestral scale of work, notwithstanding the use of compact forces, especially in this trio, it has much of the expansiveness of the Second and Third Symphonies. The works also share the element of mourning, this Trio being written in memory of Brahms's mother, who had died only four months before it was completed. Yet another parallel between the works is the referencing of the use of the horn in hunting, Brahms portraying a forest scene in the scherzo and featuring the hunting horn in it, giving a foreshadowing of Mahler.

The use of the horn gives a typically Brahmsian tone quality, as with the use of the clarinet in the chamber trio he wrote for that instrument, although there is also a clear homage to Bach. This work's emotional heart is in its yearning Adagio third movement, again a feature which draws parallels to the great Adagios of Mahler, whose debt to Brahms was vividly illustrated in this work, such as that of his Fifth Symphony.

This was followed by a good account of the Dvorak Quintet for Piano and Strings (Op81), allowing horn player Richard Watkins a well earned rest. This was a good performance of a work which although widely performed I consider over-rated; to my mind it would have been preferable to have continued with more Brahms and played his own superior Quintet, or to have selected the other major and pleasing romantic 19th century Quintet, that of Schumann.

by Juliet Williams
photo: Hanya Chlala/ Arenapal

Wonderful Two Headed Nightingale - Luke Bedford

Sunday night saw an energetic and energising performance by the Scottish Ensemble, directed from the violin by Jonathan Morton. The programme was heavily centred on the viola – 3 out of the 4 works featured the instrument in a solo role. Guest soloist was the charming Lawrence Power. Classic works from Haydn and Mozart enclosed modern British repertoire. The concert opened with an enjoyable and uplifting performance of the 44^th ('Trauer') Symphony by Haydn, a composer whose symphonies are getting a lot of airing here in the 2011/12 concert season. The grief of the title was less in evidence than energy and positivity which filled the hall creating a charged atmosphere.

This was followed by a new work by Luke Bedford, Wonderful Two-Headed Nightingale, which used the same instrumentation as Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, which was later performed to close the concert. Bedford's piece was inspired by a story of two conjoined twins in the19^th century who became singers, saving themselves from a lifetime of slavery or freak shows through their musical talent. The soloists seem at times to be 'joined at the hip' but at other times to be locked in a power struggle. The harmony/struggle between 2 string soloists is a little remniscent of George Benjamin's Viola, Viola. However this is neither a duet like Benjamin's work, nor is it a double concerto like Mozart's. The soloists open without accompaniment and orchestral colour is added gradually and stepwise, to give an increasing depth of sound as the work builds up. In this (though otherwise having a different sound world) it has something in common with Gerard Grisey's Vortex Temporum, (More here) where the viola opens alone and is joined by gradually increasing forces. It's a really interesting work, and I shall look forward to the opportunity to hear it again on Thursday, when the performance is broadcast on BBC Radio Three.

After the interval an English work of a very different character, this time from the first half of the twentieth century, was featured, Alwyn's Pastoral. At a moment when English pastoralists are getting a lot of airtime, this is an undervalued work which was delightful to hear. It is a pastoral idyll with a virtuostic solo for viola at its centre. Power excelled in this and his playing was very enjoyable.

This concert programme is being toured by the Scottish Ensemble, with performances in Perth, in Glasgow (also broadcast on Radio Three) and Friday at London's Wigmore Hall. Catch it if you possibly can, the standard of playing is excellent and the broad repertoire showcases this instrument well.

The Scottish Ensemble are following this with a spring tour again focusing on string repertoire but programmed to go back in time from Ligeti's 1969 Ramifications to Bach's Violin Concerto, via Webern, Debussy, Bruckner and Mendelssohn. They also have a new CD out on EMI, featuring the trumpeter Alison Balsom – with whom they toured n September 2011 – playing Seraph, a new concerto for her instrument by fellow Scot James Macmillan. Review here to follow. Macmillan's work can also be heard here in Edinburgh not long hence on Monday 5^th March when his Horn Quintet is performed by the Nash Ensemble, also at the Queen's Hall. 
By Juliet Williams