Meadows Chamber Orchestra: 50th Anniversary Concert
Queens Hall - 11/05/22
Edinburgh is a unique city. My 40 year career as a professional opera singer has taken me to hundreds of different cities and towns, of all sizes and in all climates, and yet, every time I come home, I jump for joy and purr with pride that I live in this peerless place. Not only is Edinburgh the most beautiful city in the world but it has an atmosphere like no other, changing with the seasons yet always remaining true to itself. It is a middle class city par excellence, with more bankers, lawyers, actuaries and accountants per square mile than any other city, and it has the world’s highest percentage of privately educated children (over 30%), learning in temples of academic wisdom which have grown up through the centuries, producing, theoretically at least, a succession of well-balanced and highly motivated adults.
This has for many years resulted in the existence of very fine amateur choirs and orchestras, and one of the best is the Meadows Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1972 by Peter Evans, who is still its principal conductor, and was at the helm for this exceptional concert to celebrate the orchestra’s 50th anniversary. It has often been noted that Edinburgh is slightly suspicious of professional musicians, and indeed I still occasionally, after an initial question about my profession, receive a follow-up question to my simple answer of “well, I’m an opera singer”, along the lines of “Yes, but what’s your real job?” It is no coincidence that, apart from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, all the major cultural institutions in Scotland are based in Glasgow.
Any slight doubts that I might have entertained about the quality of the Meadows Chamber Orchestra were swept away in a superb account of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, which was the opening piece of a very ambitious anniversary programme at the Queens Hall. Having spent much of the winter and spring reviewing concerts in the Usher Hall, it was initially a shock just to hear the power of the orchestra in the much smaller venue on Edinburgh’s South Side. This was no mimsy chamber sound, but a well-rounded and magisterial performance of a work inspired by Goethe’s play ‘Egmont’, composer and author united in their call for freedom from tyranny. We sometimes forget how swept up Beethoven was in the politics of his time, and indeed part of his genius was to articulate in music some of man’s most fervent hopes and fears. The orchestra was in good form and was inspired by Peter Evans to give a powerful and heroic performance.
As if to prove how much the MCO punches above its weight, the second work on the programme was the Scottish premiere of a piece by the well-known contemporary composer, Eleanor Alberga, her First Symphony, subtitled Strata. This was a joint commission with the excellent amateur orchestra, the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra in Bristol, with support from Creative Scotland, the Hope Scott Trust and through a legacy from David Nash.
The Jamaican-born Ms Alberga has forged a fine career, initially as a pianist, then closely associated with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, and more recently as a composer of diverse works, including a commission for the 2015 Last Night of the Proms, ‘Arise Athena!’ This new work, premiered in Bristol earlier this year and receiving its second performance here, demonstrated a firm grasp of compositional techniques in an individual style which I found very effective and stimulating.
The work’s concept is not minimalist, portraying as it does the planet on which we live. Big music for a big theme! The subtitle ‘Strata’ shows us that the work, like our planet, is constructed from layers, and the helpful programme notes transport us on a journey of understanding, both of the symphony and of our world. Starting with creation, shimmering strings and suspended cymbals announce the beginning of the world, a great dome filled with water, and Ms Alberga has created an aural vista of serenity and vastness.
The second movement whisks us to the earth’s core, this molten heart of our planet, while the third movement shows us the mantle, the volcanic layer just below the surface of the planet, where plates meet and mountains thrust upwards, and enormous pressure builds, looking for release. In the scherzo-like fourth movement, ‘Crust’, we see the surface of the planet, where we live, and here various extra sounds and noises make themselves heard, including human voices.
The slow fifth movement, ‘Sailing on Tethys’ returns us to the vast oceans, in particular Tethys, the ancient sea between the land masses of Laurasia and Gondwana, named after the Titan Goddess of Water, which existed more than 250 million years ago. This calm interlude is interrupted, as we are transported once again under the surface of the earth, and in ‘Plumes’ we are shown the great plumes of molten magma crashing through the mantle and the crust to create mountains and volcanoes. This frenzy of primordial fire and brimstone brings the symphony to a dramatic end, which elicited great cheers and bravos from the decent audience in the Queens Hall. Eleanor Alberga has created a very fine new work, full of variety and contrast, approachable and tonal to a large extent, and with lots of expressive instrumental solos. I particularly enjoyed the solo violin of the leader, Fiona Coutts, but I must say that the playing in general was splendid. I asked Ms Alberga if she had written the piece with the knowledge that it would be played by two amateur orchestras, and she said, enigmatically, that she had been aware of who would be playing, but also that she wanted to push them as far as she could! They certainly rose to the challenge.
The interval gave the audience a chance to reflect on what they had just heard and gave me a chance to see the newly refurbished public area of the Queens Hall. Gone is the narrow corridor at the side, and it is a vast improvement on what was there before, with much more room for the audience to mingle and chat.
The second half opened with Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto from 1941, played by Eleanor Alberga’ s husband, Thomas Bowes, who is a fine violinist in his own right. As well as a distinguished solo career, he has been playing with his wife as a duo, Double Exposure, since 1995, all over the world. In addition, Mr Bowes has forged an extremely successful career playing on over 200 film soundtracks. Using a 1659 Amati violin which he owns, Mr Bowes drew superb sounds out of his instrument, rich and dreamy in the slow movement and firecracker bright in the extraordinary perpetuum mobile finale. Twenty-five years ago I sang bass solo in a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert in the church in Cremona where Amati worshipped, and I remember thinking at the time how amazing it was that this little Italian town had produced the finest violin makers of all time over a period of a hundred and fifty years, largely descendants of three families, Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. It was certainly a pleasure to listen to Mr Bowes playing his Amati so wonderfully. He treated us and the orchestra to a lovely short encore by Telemann, by way of a thank you to the MCO for its sterling performances of his wife’s symphony and the Barber Concerto.
There was one more treat in store for us with the concluding work in the programme, George Gershwin’s iconic ‘An American in Paris’. I reckon there is a certain generation of listener, of which I am probably one of the youngest, who on hearing certain pieces of classical music, can only conjure up certain visual images. Rossini’s Overture to ‘William Tell’ gives us the Lone Ranger, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony treats us to the centaurs and centaurettes of ‘Fantasia’, and ‘An American in Paris’ bring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron to mind. This tone poem by Gershwin, reflecting on his experiences in Paris in the 1920s, is one of the composer’s best loved works, and the MCO played it with splendid elan and brio, bringing an entirely enjoyable concert to a rousing conclusion.
There was an encouraging mixed audience for this concert, although a direct clash with an Edinburgh Singers concert in Greyfriars probably reduced audiences for both venues. It was good to see some young players in the orchestra, although it was also wonderful to discover that ten members of the original band in 1972 are still playing under the direction of the original conductor. Quite a cause for celebration, indeed! Here’s to the next 50 years!
