(Preview) RSNO: 2022-23
At first glance, the RSNO Season starting this coming autumn, looks very promising. A nice mixture of old and new, with a pretty good range of choices over the season, including some much-loved masterpieces, there is something for almost everyone there. I am going to choose three concerts which I am personally looking forward to enormously, but I will make one negative comment here. There is, for I think at least the second year running, no Bruckner in the programme. It may be that someone in power has a problem with the Austrian composer, but the symphonies of Bruckner are, for me, along with those of Mahler, the high point of late Romantic music, and are particularly wonderful when heard live in a big concert hall. May I put in a personal plea for some Bruckner, and indeed Mahler, in Season 2023/2024?
I’m going to start with the Opening Concert, on September 30th, which is a bold choice, but a fascinating one. Opening with Stravinsky’s short piece ‘Feu d’Artifice’ (Fireworks), the RSNO will then play Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto (with Stefan Jackiw, violin), and then David Fennessy’s ‘The Riot Act’. After the interval, Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ will be played. It sounds almost as revolutionary now as it did in 1913. The RSNO’s Music Director, Thomas Søndergård, will conduct.
He will be there again on November 11th, when the orchestra and the RSNO Chorus and Youth Chorus, with soloists Susanne Bernhard (soprano), Stuart Jackson (tenor) and Benjamin Appl (baritone) will perform Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’, one of the most moving and astounding choral works of the 20th century. Mixing the Catholic liturgy with Wilfred Owen’s poems, Britten’s heartfelt hatred of warfare crystallised into this magnificent cry against all forms of war, and promises to be a real highlight of the season. It’s just a shame that Britten’s idea of soloists from the countries involved in the Second World War, and the prevailing Cold War at the time of composition in 1962, Britain, Germany and Russia, couldn’t be replicated here because of the current crisis in Ukraine. However, we have two Germans and a British singer, so it’s a decent approximation. Having worked closely with two of the original singers, Galina Vishnevskaya and Peter Pears, and having heard the third, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau many times in Edinburgh, and having myself sung the baritone solo in Chester Cathedral, I am looking forward immensely to this concert, and would encourage all our readers to get tickets.
The third concert I have chosen to recommend particularly will take place on 31st March, an all Brahms concert, again conducted by Søndergård. I apologise for choosing only the Director of Music’s concerts, but I have to say he has chosen his own gigs well. I’m sure Kate and Hugh will come up with concerts with different conductors, but mine are coincidentally all conducted by our Danish maestro.
Johannes Brahms features heavily in the coming season, and I have no quarrels with that. There were great contemporary arguments about the merits of Brahms and Schumann versus Wagner, Liszt and Bruckner, debates which I find curious now, but which provoked great passions among the participants at the time. The future of German music was apparently in peril from the dangerous new music of Wagner in particular, and some critics became apoplectic at the horrors created by the New School. In Vienna Eduard Hanslick was a conservative critic who could not stand the new music, and he was so vehement in his opposition to Wagner that the composer lampooned him viciously in his opera,’Die Meistersinger von Nűrnberg’, as the uselessly malevolent master, Sixtus Beckmesser.
I love both the music of Brahms and Wagner, and the contemporary arguments now seem dry and academic, but passions ran high at the time. In many ways, for me, Brahms represents the high point of German Romantic music, and this concert will bring out the best in his compositions. Starting with his ‘Academic Festival Overture’, written to show his gratitude for being awarded an honorary degree by the University of Breslau (now Wrocƚaw), and featuring several student drinking songs, notably ‘Gaudeamus Igitur’, the concert continues with the Third Symphony, perhaps the least popular of the four that he composed, but still a masterpiece of symphonic writing. It is maybe slightly less gripping than the others, ending less triumphantly, but it is nonetheless stunning. Composed in the same year that Wagner died, it was written in Wiesbaden on the Rhine, but had its premiere in Vienna, conducted by Hans Richter.
After the interval, the orchestra will play the Second Symphony, my personal favourite. A work of immense joy and good spirits, it represents for me an amalgamation of the atmosphere of Beethoven’s 6th and 7th symphonies, ending in the most triumphant blaze of glory from the brass section. I defy anyone not to have their hearts’ lifted by this marvellous symphony.
The whole season is available to see online at the RSNO website, and I encourage all our readers to have a look and book their tickets. They used to say on BBC Radio 2 that Friday night was Music Night, so why not fill your winter Fridays with magnificent music at the Usher Hall, played by our national orchestra, who are now playing as well as I have ever heard them. There are various very good deals available, so get booking.
Other venues and dates are available in the other major cities of Scotland. Check here for details.
