BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Usher Hall

Shelter from the storm on a Sunday afternoon. Fortunately storm Ciara had diminished by Sunday afternoon at 3pm, so we got to the Usher Hall relatively dry and there was a very healthy audience; Edinburgh music lovers are clearly a hardy bunch. They were rewarded by a very good concert, the highlight of which was a fine performance of Chopin's First Piano Concerto. First we had a Sibelius opening,The Swan of Tuonela, finally revised in 1900. Sibelius had originally meant this tone poem to be part of an opera called Building of the Boat. The opera was never completed, but he did salvage some of the music and The Swan of Tuonela, which would have been the overture of the opera, became one of four tone poems around the theme of Lemminkainen, a mythical Finnish hero who kills the swan. It has since become one of Sibelius's most popular works and listening to it this afternoon you can undestand why. It opens with a lovely cor anglais solo as the swan floats across the lake, joined by strings, horn and drum to create a mystical effect. It was a perfect overture to the concert.

Next we had a superb performance of Chopin's First Piano Concerto in E minor, played by the young Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva, who dazzled us even before she began playing, as she came on to the stage in a very sparkly sequinned dress! Her playing sparkled as well, and Chopin has been one of her major recording successes. She began as a child prodigy at the Moscow Conservatoire, giving her first concert at the age of 7!Chopin wrote this concerto at the age of 20 in 1830, soon after he left the Warsaw Conservatoire, and it was very much his ‚party piece’ as he toured Europe. Incidentally, towards the end of his life, Chopin visited Scotland as the guest of Jane Stirling, a rich pupil who may have had a desire to become Mrs Chopin, but as Chopin said ‚I'm closer to a coffin than a marital bed’. He died some months later in Paris. Our conductor this afternoon is Karl-Heinz Steffens, who as music director of Prague Opera is at home in the opera house as much as the concert hall. He is an energetic conductor, with lots of pointing and nodding as well as using his baton. He seemed to be very much in harmony with our pianist, but of course they had already performed the concerto in Glasgow, as well as in rehearsal. The work begins with a long orchestral introduction. As Hugh Macdonald pointed out in his programme notes, Chopin saw the orchestra more as a supporter than something the piano would interplay with. For him the relationship was between the piano and the audience. Our pianist certainly developed that relationship as she began quietly at first, never too showy in the first movement and very reflectively in the slow second movement, before the energetic last movement. She got a very warm reception from the big Usher Hall audience and rewarded us with an encore.

After the interval we heard Schumann's Symphony No 2 in C major.  According to Stephen Johnson's programme notes, critical opinion is divided on his second symphony. Schumann had a very unhappy personal life, suffering from quite severe mental illness. He himself said of his second symphony ‚It reminds me of my dark days‘. I must admit that it didn't overwhelm me either as a musical experience, but this was nothing to do with the quality of the orchestra, who were excellent, or of the conductor who conducted the symphony without a score in front of him but very much in charge of the orchestra. It may be that I'm on the side of the critics who found it rather dull, but it was very well played and overall a very good concert.