RSNO: Tchaikovsky Four
Usher Hall - 04/11/22
Tchaikovsky Four – Wow!
Tonight’s concert by the RSNO in the Usher Hall had a strong Russian theme, with music by Khachaturian and Tchaikovsky, separated by Three Scottish Songs by Sir James MacMillan, sung by mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill.
A decent but not huge audience turned up for this interestingly programmed concert, initially scheduled to be conducted by the RSNO’s Conductor Emeritus, Alexander Lazarev. Living in Russia, travel restrictions prevented him from coming to Scotland, but his replacement, the 27-year old Wunderkind, Patrick Hahn, General Music Director in Wuppertal, proved a triumphant choice, exhibiting complete authority from the first beat.
For anyone over 60, this concert provided memories of two hit TV shows from the 1970s. The theme for ‘The Onedin Line’, a BBC series charting the adventures of a Liverpool shipping magnate in the late 19th century, was the Adagio from Aram Khachaturian’s ballet ‘Spartacus’, and the Fate motto from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was the theme for the BBC series based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel, ‘Ivanhoe’, starring Eric Flynn (BBC, 1970).
I was intrigued to hear more of the ballet music, and I was not disappointed. Khachaturian (1903-1978) was an Armenian composer who flourished in the Soviet Union, despite periods when he was deemed to exhibit “depraved formalistic trends”, but who has never really caught on in the West. His ‘Sabre Dance’ and the ‘Onedin Line’ theme are basically all that most of us know of his music, but from tonight’s excerpts of music from ‘Spartacus’, he possessed a musical vocabulary uniquely his own, which was very appealing. Lush harmonies, blazing brass themes and gorgeous sweeping string textures, backed up by interesting use of harp, percussion, piano and celeste, turned out to be a feast for the ears, persuasively played by the RSNO, and passionately conducted by Patrick Hahn. The young Austrian conductor exhibited a superb stick technique, and a thrillingly musical empathy with the orchestra.
As part of the RSNO’s Scotch Snaps series, we next heard Three Scottish Songs by Sir James MacMillan, settings of poems by William Soutar, lovingly sung by Karen Cargill. In a shared recital with me in September, in St Michael’s Church in Edinburgh, the exciting young Scottish mezzo, Beth Taylor, sang two of these songs with piano accompaniment, in a beautiful performance which enchanted the audience. James MacMillan has recently orchestrated these songs, with a premiere earlier this year in Saffron Walden, and it was fascinating to hear the two versions so closely together in time. The accompaniments of the first two are so sparse, using pauses and silences to great effect, that I am not sure if the orchestration has benefited them, but the third song, in English rather than Scots, and based on experiences in the Spanish Civil War, was more dramatic, with explosive percussion interjections, and justified the expansion. Karen Cargill brought all her experience to bear on these songs, with restless longing in the first and deep sadness and loss in the second. The third, with its anguished sympathy for brutalised children in Spain, now tragically mirrored in Ukraine, left us all troubled at heart.
We are enormously lucky in Scotland at the moment to have three world-class mezzos representing our country around the globe (Catriona Morison, being the third), and one hopes that all of them will be heard in their homeland more frequently in the future.
After the interval, we were privileged to hear a stunning performance of what I have always thought was Tchaikovsky’s best symphony, and indeed one of the finest symphonies ever, the Fourth. Premiered in Moscow in 1878, it is an absolute masterpiece, showing off all sections of the orchestra to full advantage, strings, woodwind, brass and percussion, and leading us on a forty minute voyage of thrills and spills, climaxing in one of the greatest finales ever written!
Following on from his disastrous marriage in 1877, Tchaikovsky spent the next few years wandering all over Europe and rural Russia, shunning society and clearly trying to come to terms with his own psyche and sexuality, sustained financially by his benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of a railway magnate, who supported him but forbade their meeting. Within this bubbling cauldron of emotions, Tchaikovsky’s creative genius was given free rein, as he finished orchestrating ‘Eugene Onegin’, and wrote the Violin Concerto and the Fourth Symphony. His explanatory notes for the Fourth, sent to Mme von Meck, have given rise to myriad theories about the symphony, some credible, some spurious, but it is clear that the dramatic fanfare at the start of the first movement is meant to represent the implacable force of Fate, controlling the composer’s life. It was interesting to hear the Fourth exactly a week after we heard the RSNO playing Beethoven’s Fifth, with its fateful four note initial announcement. Tchaikovsky mentioned this similarity in his writings, so I think we can assume some connection.
Patrick Hahn demonstrated a firm grip over proceedings from that very fanfare on and led us expertly through the twists and turns of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic journey. I was reminded just how Russian the Fourth Symphony sounds, with its many allusions to folk tunes, to the quirky writing for the woodwind, and to the whirlwind nature of much of the string music. The utterly original pizzicato Scherzo is no less revolutionary sounding now than it must have been in 1878! Bravos are due to all sections, but I must single out David Hubbard ‘s magnificent bassoon playing, guest principal oboist, Rainer Gibbons, starry flautist Katherine Bryan and the ever reliable Timothy Orpen on clarinet. The entire brass section was uniformly magnificent and deeply thrilling, and timps and percussion were simply sensational.
We were all left breathless at the end, as the symphony hurtled to its conclusion, and Patrick Hahn was rightly cheered to the rafters. It is hugely satisfying to be able to report week on week that the RSNO is at the height of its powers, and with the promise of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies to come later in the season, along with the First Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky lovers are in for a treat. The immediate future brings us the deeply moving and brilliant ‘War Requiem’ by Benjamin Britten next week, and I can only beg you to get tickets for the performances in Edinburgh and Glasgow. I have sung the baritone solo in the War Requiem several times and can personally attest to the power this piece has over every listener, which will be especially poignant on Remembrance Weekend and in the context of the terrible situation in Ukraine. Don’t miss it!
