Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Dvořák Serenade
Queen’s Hall - 19/11/23
SCO Wind Soloists | Students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Every year the Scottish Chamber Orchestra wind players work with students from the Royal Scottish Conservatoire and they present two concerts in November, one on Friday 17th at the Conservatoire, and today’s matinee at the Queen’s Hall. The programme is introduced by the double bass player, Nikita Naumov who tells us that the SCO has the best wind section he’s ever worked with. He explains that the “side by side” concept mean that the young players are not doubling – playing the same notes as - the wind player they’re working with but are taught to be full members of the wind ensemble, working collaboratively and taking their solos as required. I would add that the concert is very much part of the SCO’s Season, with a full printed programme containing David Kettle’s excellently researched notes on the eclectic choice of nineteenth and twentieth century music.
The first work by Darius Milhaud sounds rather grand - the 1922 ‘Symphonie de Chambre No 5’ - but is a spiky miniature in three movements, each just a few minutes long. The ten players are in five instrumental pairings, horns, bassoons, a flute and a piccolo, an oboe and cor anglais, and a clarinet and most impressive large bass clarinet, played by William Stafford, whose low notes anchor the second movement. RCS player, Lalleh Memor revels in her piccolo solos, and her fellow student, Rachel Simmonds plays bassoon here, before showing off her contrabassoon later in the concert. The work is a hundred years old but in this polished performance which shows off all the jazzy elements sounds like it could have been written yesterday.
The English composer, Ruth Gipps (1921-1999), was an oboist and the founder of an all-woman wind group, the Portia Wind Ensemble, for whom she wrote her 1958 ‘Seascape.’ Roderick Williams has championed her quirky songs, but this is a gentler Vaughan Williams inspired octet featuring both the oboe and the cor anglais, which has a solo in the more turbulent central section. Throughout the performance the players are in a semicircle, in their instrumental groups, with Fraser Kelman on oboe, directing from the right of the stage. RCS horn player, Lik Ng, works well with Ken Henderson to add the deeper notes to the lapping of the waves in the opening and concluding sections..
Janacek’s ‘Mladi’ (Youth) is a sextet for flute, oboe, horn, bassoon, basset clarinet and clarinet. Written in 1924 when the composer was seventy, it looks back with fondness to his memories of his time as a boy chorister. Its perky opening movement suggests childish pranks with a repeated seven-note motif, which threatens to get out of hand in the rush to a conclusion. The second movement is more melancholy, beginning with a low melody on the horn, echoed in the oboe and bassoon, and later the bass clarinet. The gloom is dispersed in the chirpy third movement, a rewriting of an earlier work about his school, The March of the Blue Boys. The flute is replaced by the piccolo whose trills and staccato notes dominate. The slow opening of the finale is soon replaced by a burbling energy which leads to an explosion of birdsong before the end.
Another set of French miniatures begins the second half. Jean Francaix (1912-19) was precocious child composer and was prolific throughout his long life. A pupil of Nadia Boulanger, he continued to write in the witty style from the earlier part of the century in his 1973 work ‘Nine Characteristic Pieces.’ For 10 instruments, the nine named movements run without a break - blink and I did miss some of them. In this and the next work we see RCS players Caitlin Heathcote and Laura Ritchie, who both played cor anglais in the first half, show off their oboe playing, while Lily Brown plays flute, to lovely effect in the opening ‘Presto’ and more furiously later in the piece. The hymn-like ‘Amoroso’ featuring the horn leads to the ‘Notturno’ for clarinets, bassoon and contrabassoon – Rachel Simmonds enjoying the lower notes here.
We finish with the concert’s longest piece, Dvořák’s 1878 ‘Serenade Opus 44’, an homage to Mozart’s ‘Serenade K361 Gran Partita’ for 13 wind instruments. Dvořák has twelve instruments, Nikita Naumov on double bass and Donal Gillan on cello adding to ten winds: three horns, two bassoons and contrabassoon, two oboes, and two clarinets. RCS clarinet players, Una Simon and Isabella Runge, take turns to work with SCO’s Maximiliano Martin in this second half. It is a delightful work, certainly Mozartian in the third movement andante con moto when the melody of the clarinets and oboes soars above the horns and deeper strings. The twenty-minute length gives the players and audience a chance to enjoy the composer’s development not only of his themes but of the harmonies and textures of the different winds playing together. The strings provide more than a continuo, with pizzicato notes adding to the toy-town military march in the first movement, while the cello has a short melody of its own in the third movement That cheerful march makes a reappearance near the end of the finale, accelerating to a rousing close with triumphant cries of hunting horns.
This concert is not just a learning experience for the eight excellent emerging artists we’ve heard today but a rare chance to get to know some more of the repertoire for wind ensembles. I was very pleased to discover the Dvořák, while my partner preferred the jazzier Milhaud and Francaix.
