RSNO: ‘Scheherazade’

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall - 02/12/23

RSNO | Big Noise Govanhill | Thomas Søndergård, conductor | Pei-Jee Ng, cello

With traces of the previous night’s snowfall still very much in evidence and a chill in the air, the night of 2nd December brought the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Thomas Søndergård back to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, with a programme of goodies to warm the cockles of our hearts, introduced by associate principal oboist, Peter Dykes. For the first of these, young musicians from Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise Govanhill, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, joined the orchestra in an arrangement by Seonaid Aitken of Penny Stone’s ‘We Make a Big Noise’, with young players playing in every section of the orchestra and a young choir in the choir balcony.  Peter then introduced Soviet-born Austrian-American composer, poet and artist, Lera Auerbach, who spoke about her tone poem ‘Icarus’, which the orchestra then performed.  The orchestra’s new principal cellist, Pei-Jee Ng, was then the soloist in a performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1.  After the interval, we got the headline act, Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite, ‘Scheherazade’.  I estimate attendance was at just under three-quarters capacity, which I find disappointing for such an attractive programme.

‘We Make a Big Noise’ was fashioned by Scottish composer/educator Penny Stone from the musical ideas of the P6/7 musicians of the Big Strings Orchestra in a workshop in March of this year.  The words reflect the cultural diversity of the participants with Turkish, Hindi, Urdu and Polish as well as other languages included. The full orchestral version is an arrangement by Scottish composer/broadcaster Seonaid Aitken. The melodies have a Middle-Eastern feel and a universal appeal, while the clapping-and-stamping rhythm brought all present into the groove.  The young musicians, in their T-shirts of assorted colours, projected their joy in making music with a big orchestra and delivered a thrilling and impressive performance.

In 2005, 31-year old Lera Auerbach was commissioned by the Royal Danish Ballet to collaborate with choreographer John Neumeier in a 3-hour work to commemorate the bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen, based on his story ‘The Little Mermaid’, and to inaugurate the newly-opened Copenhagen Opera House.  She threw herself into the project and burned the midnight oil for months. The premiere was a triumph. The next day she was hospitalised with exhaustion. Her 2007 Symphony No.1 ‘Chimera’ in 7 movements deals with the emotional and mental trauma of that experience. The last two movements of the symphony, which are performed separately as the tone poem ‘Icarus’, were what we heard.  In the symphony they are subtitled ‘Humum mandere’ (to bite the dust) and ‘Requiem for Icarus’.  Despite the clear reference to the tragedy of downfall precipitated by overreaching, Lera asked us to experience it as pure music, which should always be abstract and appreciated on its own terms: “all music is ‘about’ music”.  And it was quite extraordinary music. Rhythmic timpani and slap basses launched and concluded the pursuit music of the first movement with great melodic writing for piano, celeste, harps and flute.  A spooky central section with violin and flute solos over pizzicato strings was wonderfully atmospheric.  The longer second movement was elegiacally anguished at first, giving way to spooky singing from theremin, flute, cello and violin.  After a reprise of the timpani and slap basses, the mood softens to a ghostly but peaceful elegy with touchingly beautiful writing for theremin, piccolo, vibraphone and tubular bells over pianissimo strings.  A super piece sensitively performed and, regarding the Big Noise as a prelude, a great opener for the advertised programme.

It is always something special when a section principal appears as a soloist with their own orchestra – there seems to be a special rapport and an extra element of quasi-chamber music joy in the music-making.  And indeed, the first time I heard Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto live back in the early 1970s, it was the much-loved principal cellist of the RTE Symphony Orchestra, Vincenzo Caminiti, with the RTESO under Colman Pearce, and it was unforgettable, as I have just proved.  Only three weeks prior to last night, I had heard Pei-Jee Ng playing chamber music with his RSNO colleagues, so my expectations were high.  They were not confounded.  Just as Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto has a second soloist in the shape of a trumpeter, his First Cello Concerto has a special part for horn, played last night by Guest Principal Zoe Tweed.  The 4-note motif that dominates the material of the outer movements (not, in my opinion, at all related to the composer’s DSCH monogram) set the perfect tempo for the sardonic grotesque slightly macabre Allegretto dance of the first movement.  The mischief continued with the second theme introduced on clarinet by Timothy Orpen after a timpani stroke. Cello, horn and winds danced around each other, with the horn making several attempts to get back to the 4-note motif and even getting to play the second theme, which Zoe performed with great panache.  A final timpani stroke puts an end to the mischief.  The slow movement began exquisitely on muted strings with a wistful, melancholy theme. The solo cello enters with a songlike melody, answered by the strings repeating their introductory theme, as if sympathetic, but each dealing separately with private woes. The cello strikes out with a new theme, even more yearning and becoming more agitated, building to a climax.  But yet again, the orchestra responds with the original introductory theme, louder but still no sense of mutual solace.  A ghostly version of the cello’s first song returns with the celeste in dialogue. The music winds down to a diminuendo timpani roll. The cadenza, a movement on its own, with the cello left to navigate its own way out of the gloom, starts slowly with meditative introspection.  Slowly but surely, just as in the cadenza of the First Violin Concerto, a sense of determination develops and the music gets quicker.  The finale is another grotesque macabre dance, not exactly optimistic, but very much in the character of a self-mocking grim determination to have an Allegro con moto knees-up in the face of life’s vicissitudes.  A new triple-time dance suggests that the party is in full swing.  The mischief of the first movement returns (the horn makes sure of that) and the timpani calls a final emphatic halt with 7 rapid strokes.  Pei-Jee, Thomas and the RSNO presented every evocative nuance of this Pushkinesque ultra-Russian drama with skill and style.  I heard Alisa Weilerstein play it with the RSNO a few years ago. This was every bit as good.

Almost exactly a year ago, I heard Alpesh Chauhan conduct Scheherazade with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, so I was curious to compare readings of this marvellous score. To be perfectly honest, both caught equally the sense of the exotic, the vividness of the sound painting and the sense of unfolding narrative.  I could not choose between Laura Samuel’s or Maya Iwabuchi’s violin portrayal of the storytelling princess, with Laura’s sonorous expressiveness balanced by Maya’s mellifluous melodic line. The RSNO trombones are unbeatable, but I am ever in awe of the horns of the BBCSSO. Thomas’ exquisite rallentandi and dynamics were expressively perfect, but Alpesh’s shipwreck in the finale was more unbearably tragic. That’s the joy of memory – I don’t have to choose; I can have both.  Focussing on the RSNO and Søndergård, it was Russian oriental exoticism and romanticism at its best. The sonic seascapes in the outer movements were rich and vivid.  The pacy tale of derring-do in the second movement was thrilling and compelling with superb playing from the brass.  The elegant wind arabesques in the two inner movements were characterful and idiomatic, with the illusion of improvisation.  As in the Auerbach, some lovely cello solos from Associate Principal, Betsy Taylor, with Pei-Jee on ‘other duties’.  A top-drawer outing for Rimsky-Korsakov’s greatest hit, finishing a programme of goodies.  Another winner from the RSNO.  Keep them coming, guys.