RSNO: Søndergård Conducts the Firebird
This was the first concert of the new season for the RSNO, and the first in the Usher Hall since the pandemic started over 18 months ago. Having spent much of last season watching our national orchestra play without an audience, in their digital season, it was a real delight to be in the Usher Hall again. Listening to music live is such an important experience, and, much as I have enjoyed being able to watch the wonderful orchestral players close up on camera, I was thrilled to be present for this first extremely interesting concert, directed by the orchestra’s musical director, Thomas Søndergård. The Danish conductor missed most of last season’s digital concerts due to Coronavirus quarantine rules, so it was a double pleasure to have him back at the helm for this first concert. The atmosphere was electric at the beginning. It felt like the opening night of a major festival.
The audience was socially distanced, but the hall was reasonably full, although I have to say the insistence on mask wearing at one’s seat seemed unreasonable. Fair enough walking about, but in a socially distanced auditorium? If everyone in a bar or restaurant can unmask at their table, why insist on it in a concert hall with far bigger spaces. I know it’s a legal requirement in Scotland, and I am totally supportive in general of the government’s cautious approach, but maybe it’s time for some legal tweaking?
The concert began with a short Fanfare, ‘The Isle is Full of Noises’ by Matthew Rooke. Described by the composer himself as a “pulsating, swaggering, soaring, perhaps even joyously bombastic wee firecracker of a symphonic fanfare”, dear reader, it was that very thing. I had met Matthew in a previous existence, when he ran a theatre in Berwick and we took our St Andrews production of Janacek’s ‘Cunning Little Vixen’ there, and I was delighted to hear his new piece. With its repeating string ostinato, it certainly pulsated, and the brass provided welcome thrills, perhaps of a joyously bombastic nature (but in a good way!).
Next came the Festive Overture by Dmitri Shostakovich, written in 1954 to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia, but also probably, secretly, to celebrate the end of Stalin’s “Reign of Terror” (the dictator had died the previous year). He based it on the exciting overture to Glinka’s opera ‘Ruslan and Ludmila’. This is one of Shostakovich’s most joyful works and it seemed even more poignant that the work’s UK premiere took place in this same Usher Hall, with Sir Alexander Gibson and the SNO back in 1962, with Shostakovich himself present in the audience. The modern RSNO and its music director did the work proud, and the overture raised the roof!
The first half of the concert ended with Tchaikovsky’s ‘Variations on a Rococo Theme’, a work for cello and orchestra premiered in 1877 in Moscow, where it was played by its dedicatee, the German cellist, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who was like Tchaikovsky a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire. The composer had sent the score of the cello and piano version to Fitzenhagen for advice, but he had radically changed the cello part, and in later discussions, had changed the order and cut some variations. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky at the time accepted Fitzenhagen’ s changes, largely due to the great success of the premiere, and it was only in 1941 that the work was heard as Tchaikovsky originally composed it. Most cellists still play the Fitzenhagen version, but sadly the notes provided for us tonight failed to inform us which one we heard. The assumption must be that we heard the Fitzenhagen, and the piece was played brilliantly by the young French cellist, Bruno Delepelaire. Looking like a taller, thinner, more artistic Novak Djokovich, he produced the most exquisite sounds from his Gofriller cello, made in Venice in the early 1700s. Delepelaire has been Principal Cellist with the elite Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra since 2013, and is a magnificent virtuoso in his own right. He carried off the huge technical demands of the work with audacious ease, revealing every nuance in the solo part. Particularly exceptional was his playing of the harmonics and I must say I have rarely heard the cello played so wonderfully, with Søndergård as superb accompanist at the helm of the RSNO.
In the second half of the concert we heard the complete ballet music that Igor Stravinsky wrote for ‘The Firebird’ (‘L’Oiseau de Feu’), premiered in 1910 at the Paris Opera by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, choreographed by Michel Fokine. Usually played as a concert suite put together by Stravinsky, the RSNO tonight played the full ballet, and what a thrill it provided. All the famous bits were there, but the inclusion of all the narrative elements allowed us to get a feel for what that audience in 1910 must have felt. Now I want to rush off and see the ballet too!
From a slow, dark, mysterious opening, we are soon propelled into this Russian tale of magic enchantment, full of wicked ogres, bewitched princesses and of course the Firebird itself, half woman, half bird. She is pursued and captured by Prince Ivan, but when he sets her free, she gives him a magic feather, which he uses to defeat the spell of the evil Kashchei the Immortal, who has captured and bewitched thirteen princesses (as you do!). Prince Ivan then marries the most beautiful of the re-awakened princesses!
What I had forgotten, not having heard the Firebird for years, was how Russian Stravinsky’s music is. He became more classical and rigid in his later compositions (I have sung in his ‘Rake’s Progress’, without great pleasure, alas), but this early work (he was 28 at the time of composition) demonstrates how much he was influenced by the great Russian masters of the previous generation, such as Tchaikovsky and particularly Rimsky-Korsakov. It is lush, romantic, full of colour and excitement, and the RSNO and Søndergård played it brilliantly.
There were fantastic cameos from the principal woodwind and brass, a beautiful dialogue between the oboe of Adrian Wilson and the leader, Maya Ibawuchi, and a special mention goes to the young percussionist who spent the concert sprinting across the back row to tubular bells, xylophone and tambourine. Mick Jagger would have been proud! The best moment came when the tuba player, John Whitener, who cleverly played two tubas in the Stravinsky, popped his tuba mute on. The muted tuba looked like John had a wizard sitting in his lap! Forgive the frivolity, it was a stunning concert, and we were, I hope, clear as an audience that we were as delighted to welcome the orchestra back, as they seemed to be to be back themselves.
You will be able to read more about Stravinsky in my forthcoming Blog on EMR, looking at the impact, three years after the Firebird, of the first night of ‘The Rite of Spring’. I shall be trying to make sense of the world situation at the time of a series of extraordinary premieres in history; the first night of ‘Tristan und Isolde’, ‘The Messiah’ in Dublin, the first performance of Monteverdi’s ‘Orfeo’ and several others. Watch the EMR for these, as well as close looks at some of my favourite cities where I have worked, and insights into sopranos and countertenors.
