Scottish Sinfonia
St Cuthbert’s Church
The Scottish Sinfonia have become a well established orchestra in Edinburgh since Neil Mantle founded them 50 years ago in 1970.They are composed of professional and amateur musicians, all of a very high standard. I have heard them over the years, particularly when accompanying the Bach Choir. Tonight they were over 70 strong in St Cuthbert's, spread out around the central aisle, and very much under the control of Neil Mantle.
The concert has a very Middle European feel with works by Smetana, Bartok and Dvorak. It begins with part of Smetana's great symphonic tone poem Ma Vlast (My Homeland). Since this lasts over an hour it is rarely played in full. Tonight we hear the second poem, Vltava, the name of the river running through Prague and perhaps the best known section of this mighty work.The poem attempts to describe the river and its origins, in flute playing and clarinet, then developing into a broad melody representing the river. Later we get horns representing a forest hunt, and a peasant wedding represented by a polka, before concluding with a major theme representing the mighty river. It‘s a wonderful work and the Sinfonia does it justice, in particular with fine horn playing.
The concert continues with Bartok's best known work, a Concerto for Orchestra. This was premiered in Boston in 1944, with Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony who had commissioned the work. Bartok had fled the Nazis in Hungary and moved to New York in 1940, where, although dying of leukaemia in 1943, he managed to recover enough to write this work. Bartok called it a Concerto rather than a symphony because of the way each section of the instruments is treated in a soloistic manner. The work begins with a slow introduction, developing with the use of woodwind and later brass. In the middle of the fourth section there is a kind of a joke raspberry blown at Shostakovitch, whose Leningrad Symphony was very popular at the time. Bartok didn't like it, so apparently sent it up with this joke. The end of the work is marked by a return to Bartok's favourite source, namely East European folk music. Again the work is well played by the Sinfonia.
The concert concludes with Dvorak's Sixth Symphony, composed in 1880 and premiered in Prague in 1881. Although well received at its premiere, it was later overshadowed by Dvorak's other symphonies, in particular the famous New World Symphony. His Sixth is certainly worth hearing with some lovely melody, particularly in the Adagio second movement. The third section is a very fast Furiant, and the finale is very influenced by Brahms, who was a key influence on Dvorak.The concert was well received by the decent sized audience; the Scottish Sinfonia in their fiftieth year are in fine form.
