RSNO: Søndergård Conducts Sibelius Two
Usher Hall - 19/11/21
This concert was a delight and was yet another demonstration of how good the RSNO has become. It was not a particularly popular programme, but I was pleased to see the Usher Hall well-filled, despite Covid restrictions.
Thomas Søndergård, the orchestra’s musical director, was back at the helm for this fascinating programme. We began with Søndergård’s Danish compatriot Bent Sørensen’s ‘Evening Land’, premiered in New York in 2017. In his programme notes, the composer explains that memories of his youth in Zealand were awoken one night in New York, as he was struck by the juxtaposition of the urban landscape with the tranquil fields of home. As Mahler remembered his Austrian youth while stuck in New York conducting, so Sørensen was taken back to his childhood in Denmark. To be honest, this invocation of the past worked flittingly for me tonight. I loved the quiet opening as Mya Iwabuchi’s solo violin floated across the hall, and it was a magical beginning with muted brass evoking the sounds of cattle and sheep, and perhaps human voices, calling through a misty landscape at dusk. I felt the piece rather lost its way in the middle, descending into a sort of generic post-modern cacophony, maybe bringing the noise of New York into focus. However, with a poignant oboe solo (nicely played by Adrian Wilson), the tranquillity of rural Denmark returned, and the work ended in an ethereal calm.
The second part of the programme heralded the return to Edinburgh of one of Scotland’s brightest stars, the mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison, who sang Hector Berlioz’s beautiful song cycle ‘Les Nuits d’Ete’ (Summer Nights). Originally composed in 1841 for voice and piano, Berlioz transformed the cycle into a piece for mezzo and orchestra in 1856, and it is this version which is most performed today. Its six songs to poems by Théophile Gautier cover an enormous range of emotions, from love and loss, through absence and longing, through mourning to rebirth and reconciliation. Technically difficult, and emotionally draining, they ask a lot of the performer, and demonstrate once again Berlioz’s love affair with the mezzo voice.
We were lucky tonight to hear one of the world’s most lustrous mezzos, born and brought up in Edinburgh. Like many of us, Catriona Morison, after studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with the excellent Clare Shearer, has found a career abroad, in her case firstly at Weimar, and then at Wuppertal, where she was part of the theatre ensemble. Winner of the main Prize at the Cardiff Singer of the World in 2017, she was catapulted to international fame in her early 30’s, and is now in demand everywhere. This was the first time I had heard Catriona live, and I must say I was very impressed by her voice, which is even throughout the registers and has a lovely silky quality. Scotland is indeed privileged to have two world class young mezzos in Ms Morison and Glasgow’s Beth Taylor, presently wowing the Germans in Berlin and Frankfurt. I sincerely hope that we can hear more of them here in Scotland, and I applaud the RSNO for booking Ms Morison for this concert. Her voice is perfectly suited to Berlioz’s wonderful music, and with her excellent French pronunciation, she received a great ovation from the home support, warmly accompanied by Søndergård and the RSNO.
I hope that, as she performs these songs more often, she will be able to sing them from memory in the future. It is a big ask for a young singer to go off the book in a concert, when rehearsal is so minimal, and I don’t blame her at all for using the score, but she will give an even better performance once she has them in her memory bank.
I would also like her to take possession of the songs more. She sings them so well, and clearly has thought deeply about her interpretation, but I felt she was trying too hard to perform them, rather than live them. Her quiet singing was exquisite, but sometimes it felt technical rather than from the heart. When she opened out, the voice filled the hall, so perhaps she needs to tweak the volume controls more often. With more colours and more dynamic range, she will be able to offer the whole cycle as a bigger picture. It was interesting that from my seat in mid-stalls, I felt I heard and understood every word, but friends in the Grand and Upper Circles reported a lack of linguistic clarity, clearly an acoustic rather than an interpretative lack. I remember one of my earliest lessons from the great Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was always to sing to the back row of the Gods, not the middle of the stalls. By projecting to the furthest point, you were simultaneously taking care of the nearer audience!
This is also the time to make a plea for supertitles. The Usher Hall has the facility to show the words of songs, and/or translations on the beam above the orchestra. It would improve the audience experience immeasurably if we could understand what the singer is saying. The technology is there. Use it!
These are minor caveats which should not detract from the wonderful performance tonight, and I look forward to hearing Ms Morison again here soon. Incidentally, for the fashionistas among our readers, she looked fabulous, tall and elegant in her black evening dress, with flaming russet hair.
After the interval, we were treated to a simply fantastic account of one of the great symphonies, Sibelius’s Second, a fitting climax to a splendid concert.
Sibelius had spent some time in Italy in 1901 and had been inspired by the colours and climate of that country. He was sketching a possible tone poem on the subject of Don Juan, and quite a lot of that material found its way into the second symphony. Political events in his homeland drew him back, and when the symphony was premiered in Helsinki in 1902, the mixture of Finnish tunes and harmonies with the sketches from Italy proved wildly popular with the audience and it has remained one of the best loved of all Sibelius’ works. Although the composer denied an overtly nationalist agenda (Finland was struggling to cope with its huge neighbour, Russia), many Finns looked on the symphony as representing their homeland’s desire to be free of Russian oppression.
Thomas Søndegård obviously knows the score very well, and he showed a marvellous clarity of vision over the 45 minutes and four movements of the symphony. Right from the beginning with its Nordic feel, we plunged into a musical evocation of the country’s heroic struggle, with soaring strings and restless movement throughout the orchestra. Having the violas in front, and to the right of the conductor, allowed us to hear more clearly Sibelius’ textures. At the start of the second movement, there is a wonderfully spooky pizzicato section for cellos and basses, and this orchestral arrangement and the conductor’s clear beat created a special clarity, enhanced by Søndegård’ s decision not to use his baton for that movement. He caressed the orchestra with two expressive hands, as if moulding a sculpture before our very eyes. There were several parts of the symphony, particularly the pizzicato sections, where I was strongly reminded of Wagner’s orchestration for Act 1 of ‘Die Walküre’, which had been premiered in 1870, and I was also reminded that, less than two months after the first performance of the second symphony, the world heard Debussy’s ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ for the first time. What an era for great music. The performance built up wonderfully to the great final movement, and reached a magnificent climax with blazing brass, whirling woodwind and soaring strings
It was fabulous to be back in the concert hall, listening to great music played by a great orchestra, directed by their principal conductor. Nearly two years of listening to recorded sound had suppressed my senses, but this concert and others I have recently attended given by the RSNO confirmed my opinion that there is nothing better than being in the presence of a full symphony orchestra! I was particularly pleased to hear the RSNO playing Sibelius so well, as that composer had been championed by the great Sir Alexander Gibson, back in the days when I first got to know and love classical music through his concerts in this very same hall.
