Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Northern Lights with Joseph Swensen
Queen’s Hall - 18/04/24
Joseph Swensen, conductor | André Cebrián, flute | Katherine Bryer, cor anglais
This afternoon’s concert is the last of three matinees which the Scottish Chamber Orchestra have included as part of their subscription series this year. “What the marketing people need to know,” says bassoonist Alison Green, “is whether you prefer to hear a concert then have your tea or have your tea and then hear a concert.” The matinees have been popular with subscribers and other, generally older, regular attenders, but the attendances have been lower than at evening concerts, as we’re missing most of the young people. With a university next door, surely not everyone has lectures on a Thursday afternoon? With the 2024-2025 season announcement due soon we’ll see whether the experiment has been continued.
Joseph Swensen, the SCO’s Conductor Emeritus, is in charge this afternoon for a programme of contrasting works from countries which experience the Northern Lights. Peter Maxwell Davies’ 2013 Concert Overture ‘Ebb of Winter’ was composed for the SCO, whose players he knew very well, after composing his ten Strathclyde concertos specifically for their section principals between 1986 and 1996. Alison Green also recalls working with him on Hoy with budding composers. “It’s a difficult work to listen to, and it’s a difficult work to play,” she says, “but we play it very well.” Indeed they do. Read David Kettle’s programme notes here for more on the composition of the work. During this period Maxwell Davies received his first diagnosis of leukaemia, but also successful medical treatment. Orkney’s wild weather and shores dominate the first part of the work, a brassy opening giving way to Scotch-snap rhythms as snatches of melody are passed across the orchestra. Richard Cartlidge plays a full set of modern timpani which also features in this turbulence. There’s challenging writing for all sections, especially the virtuosic trumpet duet, written with today’s performers, Peter Franks and Shaun Harrold in mind. The music quietens down for some minutes, with a sense not of peace but of an awkward stasis, perhaps waiting for better weather as spring approaches or reflecting the pause in Maxwell Davies’ own life. But then, stirred by rhythmic beating on the timpani, the Glockenspiel (percussionist Iain Sandilands) is heard through higher notes on the wind instruments as the work moves to a still, harmonious conclusion, like a pale sun seen through sea spray, as the composer said. The orchestra give an outstanding and committed performance of one of Maxwell Davies’ last works for them.
Carl Nielson’s 1926 ‘Flute Concerto’ is next, featuring SCO principal flute, André Cebrián. Written five years before the composer’s death, it features daring juxtaposition of instruments, which challenge the idea, as he said himself, that the flute is a “mild-mannered instrument” whose “home is in Arcadia.” The flute’s first sparky syncopated entry sets it at odds with the pace of the orchestral opening. After some interplay with the bassoon and clarinet, there’s a raucous march with bass trombone and timpani, with the flute playing over both, Cebrián almost dancing in time to the rhythms. More “refined” playing takes over, with a particularly fine section for flute, clarinet (Maximiliano Martin) and cellos, before a cadenza, with rolling timpani before the trilling clarinet leads the orchestra to a warm conclusion. The unconventional concerto has only two movements, although the second movement has five different tempo indications, incorporating slow sections, faster sections and a final march. There are further interventions from the trombone, and witty rejoinders from the flute with bassoon and clarinet. It’s a cheerful work which the audience obviously enjoys, with final cheers for conductor, Joseph Swensen, soloist André Cebrián, clarinet player Maximiliano Martin and, of course, the trombonist Alan Adams.
After the interval, Sibelius ‘The Swan of Tuonela’, originally written as a possible overture for a later-abandoned opera ‘The Building of the Boat,’ was first heard as one of the pieces in the ‘Lemminkäinen Suite.’ On its premiere a critic complained of its inordinate length, but posterity thought differently and it is now one of Sibelius’s most played works. Sub-principal oboe, Katherine Bryer, plays the cor anglais solo from her usual position in the second back row, and her swan glides serenely over the mysterious depths of the horns and bassoons, and the shimmering of harp and pizzicato strings. It’s a lovely performance and unlike that early critic, her audience wishes it could have gone on longer.
Joseph Swensen introduces the last work, his arrangement of Nielsen’s first string quartet as ‘Four Movements for Orchestra’. He tells us it’s almost the fortieth anniversary of his first appearance with the SCO as the soloist in Mendelssohn’s ‘Violin Concerto’ (I’ve just listened to his later recording of the concerto directing and playing violin with the orchestra, and very good it is too). He was first introduced to the Nielsen Quartet by his seven-year old son, who’d heard it online and been impressed with the work of the nineteen-year old composer. Swensen’s arrangement uses the full orchestra of around fifty players, and so there’s plenty of opportunities for colour and nuance in the performance. Like early works in many genres, it has an abundance of ideas and bags of energy – the first movement is marked ‘allegro energico.’ The highlights for me are the Mozartian opening to the ‘andante amoroso’ second movement, with clarinets, horns, flutes and bassoons luxuriating in delicious harmonies, and the raucous ‘scherzo allegro molto’ with rasping trumpet and horn opening, and a cello drone in the quieter middle section. Private Eye’s music correspondent, Lunchtime O’Boulez, has noted a tendency for Radio 3 to limit the repertoire in its morning programmes – I suggest this scherzo as a suitably unusual breakfast wake-up call! This is a longish work, however, and by the last movement the quirkiness begins to pall. Was it a mistake to programme it with the Flute Concerto? The audience seems happy with the double Nielsen and applaud vigorously. We go home for our tea in hazy sunshine and Edinburgh’s winter winds not yet ebbing.
The next two Queen’s Hall concerts are conducted by Andrew Manze, with pianist Steven Osborne playing Ravel on 25th April, and an all-Vaughan Williams concert on 2nd May. The season ends with Maxim Emelyanychev, reprising his 2023 Proms triumph, conducting Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ in the Usher Hall on 9th May.
