Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Viennese New Year

Usher Hall - 01/01/23

The ‘traditional’ association of New Year celebrations with Viennese music of the latter half of the 19th century dates from as recently as 1939, but that fact and its dubious political implications don’t seem to matter as classical music lovers the world over pour the musical bubbly and enjoy the party.  Not that this music is mere froth – a figure of no less gravitas than the great Brahms confided that he wished he himself had written the opening bars of ‘The Blue Danube’.  So, postponing solemn resolutions until after the party’s over, our beloved Scottish Chamber Orchestra brought to the Usher Hall their take on a Viennese New Year’s Concert on the afternoon of New Year’s Day 2023. 

As always with the SCO, the programme was imaginative and so not restricted to purely Viennese music.  Yes, we were treated to such Johann Strauss II goodies as the ‘Fledermaus Overture’, the ‘Thunder and Lightning Polka’, the ‘Emperor Waltzes’ and ‘The Blue Danube’.  But the programme also incorporated some French exoticism from Chausson, Bizet and Ravel.  Let us not forget that the former capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire particularly enjoyed music with a Hungarian flavour, strongly influenced by both gypsy and klezmer elements, and composers like Lehár and Kálmán fully exploited these tastes.  The Bizet and Ravel pieces have a distinctive gypsy flavour, while the Chausson tells the tale of a composer who travels through Asia to find a melody with which he can woo the woman who has rejected him.   

The programme was conducted by Conductor Emeritus, Joseph Swensen, an American of Norwegian and Japanese descent who teaches conducting, violin and chamber music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.  The soloist in the Chausson and Ravel was the German virtuoso violinist and son of the composer Boris Blacher, Kolja Blacher.  

The Fledermaus Overture set out Swensen’s interpretative stall with a characterful performance rich in the mannerisms of Viennese performing tradition: teasing rubato, lush string portamento and the subtle elongation of the second beat of a 3/4 bar, without any of the recent Rieu-isms which I detest.  The wistful oboe solo was lovingly delivered by Robin Williams.  Everything one might wish from a performance of this music was there, except perhaps, to my ear, the faster scurrying string passages were less rhythmically coherent than I prefer, though admittedly the same ear had been pampered that very noontide by the peerless precision of the strings of the Vienna Phil. 

I pause to mention the sensitive topic of ‘unscheduled soloists.’  Over my right shoulder was a cougher, who barked without attempt at muffling throughout the concert, seeming to favour the quietest passages of the music for his solos.  A host of other coughers and cougher/splutterers were dotted through the audience and had perfected a fugato delivery, equally unschooled in the use of the mute.  The lady seated on my right was a hummer, who almost knew the melodies of the Strauss pieces and accompanied them with varying degrees of approximation.  There were also at least two babies in the audience, whose lack of eloquence was compensated in full by vociferous expression of ‘vocables’ of music criticism.  Did all this mar my enjoyment of the performance?  Well yes, it did rather. 

That said, these annoyances could not repress the vigorous high spirits of the ‘Thunder and Lightning Polka’, which was plainly as thrilling and exciting to perform as it was to hear.  I can personally vouch for this, having played the scrumptious cello part in the front desk of the Vienna Sinfonietta in the Cultural Foundation auditorium in Abu Dhabi in April 1993, when members of our fledgling Festival Orchestra of Abu Dhabi were invited to join the visiting Austrians for part of their concert. 

Inspired by a Turgenev novella and commissioned as a concerto by violin virtuoso Ysaÿe, Chausson’ s ‘Poème’ is more a romantic rhapsodic tone poem with a dazzling solo violin part.  The influence of Wagner’s ‘Tristan’ is clear, yet the music seems to anticipate the sound worlds of Debussy and Delius and the exoticism (and indeed eroticism) of Szymanowski.  This was my first time hearing Kolja Blacher’s Strad and I would want to affirm that player and instrument is a marriage made in heaven.  Glorious tone and phrasing were matched by fabulous orchestral playing.  Superb. 

The first half of the concert concluded with my personal favourite of Johann Strauss the Younger’s waltz sets, ‘The Emperor’.  Joseph Swensen and the SCO were ‘in the zone’.  Perfect. 

First up after the interval was Guiraud’s first orchestral suite from Bizet’s opera ‘Carmen’, the tragic tale of a Sevillian gypsy cigarette factory girl who escapes arrest by seducing the corporal of the guard, only to dump him in favour of a glamorous bullfighter, inflaming his jealous rage, whereupon he murders her.  The first suite includes the doom-laden ‘Prelude’, the feisty exotic ‘Aragonaise’ (another great oboe solo), the idyllic ‘Intermezzo’ (prelude to Act III with gorgeous solos for flute and harp from André Cebrián and Sharron Griffiths respectively), the seductive ‘Séguidille’ (unconventionally played as a Viennese waltz rather than a French valse, but still delicious), the exquisitely melodic ‘Les dragons d’Alcala’ (lovely bassoon and clarinet solos from Cerys Ambrose-Evans and Yann Ghiro respectively) and finally the swaggering ‘Les Toréadors’.   Excellent. 

Kolja Blacher returned to the stage for a performance of Ravel’s scintillating and very non-PC rhapsodic fantasy, ‘Tzigane’, in the orchestrally accompanied version.  Respectfully authentic homage to Roma music it most definitely ain’t, but it was mind-blowingly well played, nonetheless. 

The published programme concluded with the perennial favourite of audiences the world over: ‘To the Beautiful Blue Danube’.  The Viennese mannerisms of performance were not merely observed but indulged: yet that is exactly what this music demands and deserves.  An unalloyed pleasure. 

Continuing the theme of Franco-Viennese fusion there were two encores: the ‘Can-can’ (Galop infernal) from Offenbach’s ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’ and the traditional close to every Neujahrskonzert, Strauss’ ‘Radetzky March’.  Good clean fun. 

Enough to set anyone up for a Happy New Year!