Tchaikovsky/Ellington Barber and Dvořák
Usher Hall, 6/12/ 2024
RSNO, Patrick Hahn (conductor), Randall Goosby (violin)
After the superlatives of the last two RSNO concerts at the Usher Hall, I was slightly underwhelmed by the programme tonight, having heard the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto and the New World Symphony fairly recently in the same venue. Particularly as this is the last full season concert given by the RSNO in Edinburgh until 14th February 2025, I had hoped for something a bit different. However, a full house (yet again – bravo!) and a brilliant performance dispelled my doubts, and the audience left exhilarated by great music making. It is worrying nonetheless that Scotland’s premier orchestra will not perform in the capital city for well over two months. They will be busy with recordings and educational ventures, but it is a damning indictment of current artistic funding that both the RSNO and Scottish Opera have such truncated seasons. Both the UK and Scottish governments are guilty of seriously underfunding the Arts in general, and I can’t see any real improvement in the future. Moreover, when the Arts Council and Creative Scotland are so negative about classical music in particular, we need to shout from the battlements that this music, and our great cultural heritage, are worth supporting and are neglected at our peril.
We welcomed back Patrick Hahn to the podium, and I was once again thrilled to see the rapport between the Principal Guest Conductor and the players. It is very clear how much the orchestra likes playing for the young Austrian, and every concert he conducts is special.
They started tonight with a curiosity, an orchestral arrangement by Jeff Tyzik of Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s 1960 jazz arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s 1892 Nutcracker Suite. The 1960 album was a great hit, featuring such cool movements as the ‘Sugar Rum Fairy’ and the ‘Toot Toot Tootie Toot’, with Ellington holding things together from the piano. Tyzik’s version still swings with a jazzy swagger, and you could see how much the RSNO enjoyed letting their collective hair down. These crossover compositions can be grim, often being neither fish nor fowl, but with Patrick Hahn grooving away on the podium, it all felt very cool, and was brilliantly played. The RSNO now has such consummate musicians at every desk that the transition between styles is seamless, and the fact that a lot of the orchestra’s time is spent in recording studios playing soundtracks and the like means that they can slip into whatever style they’re asked to play. The reaction from the audience tonight (again with a big phalanx of younger listeners) was real and loud!
The second item on the programme was the amazing violin concerto by Samuel Barber, first heard in Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1941. Its origins as a vehicle for Iso Briselli, the initial complaints about it by Briselli’s teacher, Albert Meiff, and the resultant premiere by Albert Spalding instead, have all detracted from the simple fact that this is one of the 20th century’s greatest works for violin and orchestra. The soloist tonight was the brilliant young American, Randall Goosby, who is the RSNO’s 2024/25 Concert Season Artist in Residence, and wow, he is good! From the largely radiant first two movements to the scatter gun perpetuum mobile of the finale, Mr Goosby was in complete command of his superb 1708 Stradivarius, producing a beauty of tone which one hears only rarely these days. I was reminded of the sound of the peerless David Oistrakh, whose sweetness of tone has always delighted me on record, and even in the most crazy virtuoso passages in the last movement, Mr Goosby extracted wonderful clarity. He thrilled us with a lovely encore by Coleridge -Taylor Perkinson, continuing the American mood.
After the interval, Mr Hahn and the RSNO gave us a revealing performance of Dvořák’s 9th Symphony, famously subtitled ‘From the New World’. Even though this symphony is played frequently, it never ceases to delight, and this rendition was very classy. I remember early on in my operatic career, a very famous singer responded to my slight ennui at playing a role in a popular opera by saying - “Brian, you have to understand that at any performance of this opera, however many times you have played the role, there will be many, many people who have never seen it before. You must play each performance as if it’s your first too!” It’s the same with attending performances of well-known music. Remember how many are hearing it for the first time, and if you are reviewing it, try to find new things to listen for too. I found lots of subtleties in Patrick Hahn’s interpretation which I hadn’t heard before and tried to listen anew to the great cor anglais (Jane Evans) solo and the gorgeous solos for horn and flute. I must admit though that I still don’t hear the similarity to ‘Swing low, sweet chariot’ in the first movement melody. I have read about it in programme notes and in books, but I still don’t get it!
It is a great match between the RSNO and Patrick Hahn, and I look forward to many more collaborations. I just wish we didn’t have to wait until 14th February to hear this wonderful orchestra in the Usher Hall again in the concert season! There will be two December concerts, Home Alone in concert (RSNO at the movies) on 13th December at 7pm and the RSNO Christmas Concert, featuring the Snowman, on Sunday 22nd at 3pm, but the concert season proper only returns in February.
