EIF: Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Usher Hall - 24/08/23
Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela - Rafael Payare, conductor5
Edinburgh Festival Chorus - Aidan Oliver, chorus director
Natalia Romaniw, soprano | Karen Cargill, mezzo soprano | Andrew Staples, tenor | Christopher Maltman, bass
The Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela is a very different group from the youth orchestra which toured to the Edinburgh International Festival in 2007 – though some of the players may still be around. Sedately clad in black, men in formal suits and bow ties, women in long dresses with lace sleeves, they are serious adult musicians, though still retaining links with El Sistema, the musical education system which has benefited Venezuelan children since 1975. In this year’s EIF residency, they are conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, who first made them famous, and in tonight’s concert by Rafael Payare, once a horn player graduate from El Sistema, and now resident in Berlin, with an extensive conducting career, he says he still enjoys returning to work with the orchestra.
There has been controversy about El Sistema and the orchestra’s adherence to the standard classical repertoire. Their first work provides the best of both worlds in Villa-Lobos’s 1944 suite, Bachianas Brasileiras No 7 – (Bach inspired Brazilian music). In its four movements, the composer sought to combine the formal structures of Bach’s music with Latin American melodies and rhythms, with a prelude, gigue, toccata and fugue. Superlative brass and horns and some evocative timpani make this an unusual opening.
Friedrich Schiller’s words celebrating brotherhood in his ‘Ode to Joy’ inspired Beethoven and their evocation of community has led to inclusion of the symphony in this year’s festival. Tonight we’re equally inspired by the Orchestra’s stirring account of Beethoven’s revolutionary music. The string playing is precise and nicely balanced with the double-basses, unusually, placed behind the first violins. Five horns help to make the Scherzo appropriately jokey, with bold ‘harrumphings’ answered by tootling bassoons. A beautiful horn solo in the slow movement is offset by bassoons, with flutes and oboes. Payare excels in pointing up these distinctive passages in the work, but he also make the dramatic crescendos count with splendid resonance from trumpets and timpani.
As the bass soloist utters his cry, “O friends, no more of these sounds”, the focus shifts. The Edinburgh Festival Chorus, in its most straightforward gig this week, does not disappoint, moving with ease from tenderness to heroic outbursts with well-prepared technical excellence – the women at one point delivering a unison trill. Much credit goes to their musical director, Aidan Oliver. The soloists, Christopher Maltman (bass), Andrew Staples (tenor), Karen Cargill (mezzo) and Natalia Romaniw (soprano), are all top-notch British singers, but fare less well in their positions behind the orchestra than if they’d sung at the front of the stage. Solos with lighter orchestration ring out clearly, but we lose the full power of their voices when they sing with full orchestra and chorus. As the chorus sings the final verse, the triangle and piccolo ping their top notes to add to the joyful conclusion.
Another outstanding Usher Hall concert is enthusiastically received by a full house. Sadly, there are continuing problems with programmes. Tonight’s, available only through a QR code, contained an essay on the Beethoven, but nothing on the Villa-Lobos (Tom Service’s podcast mentions it briefly). Chorus and soloists’ names are provided, but disgracefully, there’s no list of the orchestra members - surely both uninformative and discourteous.
