RSNO: Sibelius One
Usher Hall - 27/10/23
Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Kristiina Poska, conductor | Rachel Barton Pine, violin
Tonight’s RSNO concert at the Usher Hall, conducted by the Estonian Kristiina Poska, featured music by Copland, Florence Price and Sibelius. It was a brave bit of programming, given that none of the pieces were obvious crowd-pleasers, and the resulting rather sparse audience was unsurprising, although it must be said that they were impressively vocal in their support after each work.
The opener was Aaron Copland’s suite from his ballet ‘Appalachian Spring’, premiered in 1945 in New York. The scenario of the ballet revolves around a pioneer celebration in the Pennsylvanian Hills in the early part of the 19th century, and the suite, which lasts approximately 25 minutes, is a distillation of the music from the ballet. I was surprised to discover that I hadn’t heard it before and was pleased to find it easy on the ear, as much of early Copland was quite modernist. The music is decidedly lyrical, and, as it was extracted from a ballet score, there are many dance sections, which Ms Poska conducted with deft assurance and fine control. I was amused to find that, like our own Sir Donald Runnicles, she is left handed, and controls the orchestra from a different angle than most conductors. Copland’s masterstroke occurs about halfway through, as the solo clarinet sets off a set of variations on the old Shaker hymn, ‘The Gift to be Simple’, known to thousands of ex-Sunday School members as ‘The Lord of the Dance’.
The second piece was Florence Price’s Second Violin Concerto, written in 1952 a year before her death, and premiered posthumously in Chicago in 1964. Much of Price’s music was discovered only recently, in 2009, including the Second Violin Concerto, during renovations of a dilapidated house in Illinois which had been her summer home. The compositions of this black woman had been neglected and forgotten since her death, but fortunately, finally, her genius has been recognised and celebrated. The distinguished Chicago violinist, Rachel Barton Pine, has been a major protagonist in the rediscovery of Florence Price’s music, and we were fortunate to have Ms Pine’s presence on stage tonight, as she brilliantly played the beautiful solo part in the 2nd Violin Concerto, a one movement piece which somehow sounds both American and European at the same time. Ably accompanied by the RSNO and Kristiina Poska, Ms Pine brought a fine tone and superb technique to the demanding violin part of this short but fascinating piece. Ms Pine’s career (and her life) were almost brought to an end in 1995, when she suffered horrendous injuries in a train accident in a Chicago suburb, but she recovered, albeit restricted to a motorised wheelchair, and has continued her remarkable career to our great benefit. As an encore, she played Nathan Milstein’s arrangement for solo violin of Liszt’s ‘Mephisto Waltz’, an unbelievably virtuoso performance which brought huge roars of applause from the audience. Ms Pine plays a Guarneri violin, made by the great master in Cremona in 1742, on lifetime loan from her sponsor, and it sounded gorgeous. I once sang bass solo in a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass in Cremona Cathedral, and there was a real sense of wonderment that this little Italian town in Northern Italy had produced Guarneri, Stradivari, Amati and Ruggieri. What a heritage!
After the interval, the RSNO and Kristiina Poska played Jean Sibelius’ astonishing First Symphony, premiered in 1899 in Helsinki, revised during the next year, and performed in 1900 in the form we know it now. That first performance was, like Mahler’s 1st Symphony or Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ or Debussy’s ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’, one of those transforming moments in musical history, which must truly have been extraordinary to witness. Coming from, but also diverging from, the Germanic/Austrian tradition of symphonic music, Sibelius produced a work in symphonic form but sounding completely different and new.
Beginning with a long clarinet solo over a timpani roll, and soon launching into a wildly expressive string episode, the symphony consistently surprises the listener at every turn, and Ms Poska and the orchestra produced a vivacious and thrilling performance. Stand-out solos came from Pei-Jee Ng (cello) and tonight’s leader, Lena Zeliszewska, as well as all the woodwind principals, and I must highlight the brilliant playing both in the Sibelius and the Copland by the guest principal clarinet, Yann Ghiro, and the fantastic work throughout the Sibelius by the RSNO’s charismatic timpani player, Paul Philbert.
Once again, I am going to moan about the dim lighting in the hall. With a programme of less well-known music, the frustration of being unable to read the programme notes was enormous. Could you do something about this please, RSNO or Usher Hall!
