Stream: RSNO - Armstrong, Barber and Brahms
This concert, part of the digital series from the RSNO in this weird Covid-affected season, featured a slightly strange selection of works, conducted by the very young British conductor, Angus Webster. After a serene and contemplative opening with two movements from Craig Armstrong’s orchestration of melodies from St Kilda ‘Stac Lee’, the orchestra and their leader as soloist, Maya Iwabuchi, played Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. The concert ended with the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms, one of the great symphonies of the 19th Century.
The genesis of the first work, ‘Dawn and Dusk’ from Stac Lee, is perhaps more interesting than the work itself. Stac Lee is a precipitous sea stack, part of the group of islands known in English as St Kilda and in Gaelic as Hiort, approximately 40 miles north west of Uist in the Outer Hebrides. It is home to thousands of sea birds, particularly Northern Gannets, and Stac Lee was visited, when the islands were inhabited, by islanders who climbed its steep cliffs to catch gannet chicks and eggs, which were then cured or smoked. A local delicacy (if that’s the right word) was Guga, a salted gannet which was, apparently, an acquired taste.
The islands were evacuated in 1930, and no longer maintain a working population. In 2006, a social worker discovered that a resident of a care home, Trevor Morrison, had learned some melodies from a former resident of St Kilda, and between them, Trevor played the tunes on the home piano and the care worker recorded them. In 2016, a CD was produced, ‘The Lost Songs of St Kilda’, conducted by James MacMillan, featuring some of the original piano recordings by Trevor Morrison, who had died in the interim, some of the tunes orchestrated by well-known Scottish composers, such as Craig Armstrong. He is perhaps best known for his film scores, notably Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Moulin Rouge’, and the much loved ‘Love Actually’. The two pieces which began this concert are scored for string orchestra and harp. They are ethereal and calm, unlike the normal weather on St Kilda, and, although serenely beautiful, didn’t seem to me to go anywhere. However, having listened to the original recordings made by Trevor Morrison, at the age of 70 in the care home, it is clear that the melodies he played were indeed ethereal and calm, and had no need of much movement. I must say that these old recordings of the lonely old man on his piano are, for me, more evocative than the string transcription we heard today. However, they were an unchallenging opening to the concert, and beautifully played by the orchestra.
Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto was written for a commission from the Philadelphia industrialist, Samuel Fels in 1939, to be played by Fels’ ward, Iso Briselli. On receiving an advance for the commission, Barber, who had achieved some fame for his beautiful 1936 work, ‘Adagio for Strings’, travelled to Switzerland where he composed the first two movements. The gathering clouds of war forced the composer back to the USA, where, in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, he finished the work. Briselli was delighted by the first two movements, written in a highly romantic style, but was less keen on the moto perpetuo third movement. His violin coach in New York, Albert Meiff, wasn’t taken with any of the concerto, and, since he was on good terms with Fels, an impasse occurred which almost scuppered the whole enterprise. Barber dug in his heels, and the concerto was finally given its official premiere by Albert Spalding with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy in the Philadelphia Academy of Music in 1941, followed closely by another in the Carnegie Hall, New York.
The performance by the RSNO and Maya Iwabuchi was quite splendid, and I warmed to the music’s luscious, romantic and rhapsodic intensity. Barber’s writing is unashamedly old-fashioned and none the worse for that. The violin comes in right at the start, and was played brilliantly by Ms Iwabuchi, Japanese-born but California-raised. She has been leader of the RSNO since 2011 and is a superb player in her own right. Indeed what has impressed me very much over this series of concerts that I have reviewed has been the uniformly top quality of the instrumental playing. It is remarkable that in this era when we are always worrying about the standard of music teaching in Britain, the standard of orchestral playing has been going up and up, certainly during my lifetime. Whether that will endure in our current crisis of confidence and funding is uncertain, but there is no doubt that the quality in this orchestra is high. The modern internationalism of music is obviously hugely important, in that every orchestra in the world can and does pick and choose its players from an international pool. I myself have lamented the lack of Scottish voices to be heard on these broadcasts, and I know that Alexander Gibson was very firm about employing Scottish musicians and singers, but this is the world we live in, and I certainly can’t complain that the RSNO is anything other than excellent!
The first two movements were superbly played and highlighted yet again the fine woodwind section of the orchestra. Ms Iwabuchi was in total command of her part and impressed with her complete dedication to the music. Angus Webster proved to be a sympathetic and unobtrusive conductor, and I really enjoyed hearing this concerto for the first time. The third movement (Presto in moto perpetuo) does come as something of a shock, and I can see that Iso Briselli and his teacher must have been rather surprised by its driving rhythm and non-stop attack. It did seem as if we had suddenly been propelled into the 20th century with a bang, but once one accepts that this is what Barber wanted, it is extremely impressive. Ms Iwabuchi’s playing was spellbinding, and the concerto as a whole was wonderfully played.
An interesting snippet of information is that Samuel Barber was the long-time partner of Gian Carlo Menotti, and when their relationship ended in 1970, Menotti moved away from America and bought Yester House in East Lothian, where he lived until his death at 95 in 2007, and where he is buried.
The final work in this concert was the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms, and I was intrigued to see how Mr Webster fared with one of the mainstays of the symphonic repertoire. According to his biography, he was born in Cornwall, and is either 21 or 22, and has been conducting since an early age. He won a Salonen Fellowship to the Colburn School in Los Angeles, studying with Esa-Pekka Salonen, and is also an accomplished pianist. He is obviously immensely talented for such a young man, but I was still surprised to see him conduct the RSNO in a major concert. One could not really tell from the first two pieces, as his conducting was fine but unobtrusive, but Brahms 4 is a great work, and he was conducting a well-established professional orchestra, all of whose players were almost certainly older than him.
What impressed me right away was that, unlike most tyro conductors, his technique is neat and clear, with no great histrionics. The tempi he chose for the Brahms were, on the whole, well-judged, and again, unlike many young conductors, not extreme. Indeed, the first movement was a little slower than I was used to. This allowed the RSNO woodwind to shine all the brighter in this wonderful movement.
Brahms’ fourth and final symphony was premiered in Meiningen in Germany in 1885, rehearsed by the young Richard Strauss, as readers may remember from my recent article on Strauss. It is almost entirely written in minor keys, and, unusually for the period, ends in a minor key, E Minor, but I have never found it deeply tragic or depressing, like some of Mahler’s music. Indeed, Brahms conjures up some of his most beautiful and heartfelt melodies in the course of the symphony, and a good performance should leave one feeling moved and thrilled, if not exactly jumping up with joy! This was most certainly a good performance!
Highlights for me were the clarinet playing throughout, which was truly beautiful, and actually all the woodwind were marvellous. The horns were strongly featured, and as I wrote last time, it was great to see the individual players in close up. This is, for me, one of the most interesting things about this digital season, the possibility to see the players themselves putting together the ensemble that makes up a great symphony orchestra. Normally in a public concert, we see them from afar, and marvel in their superb musicality. Long gone are the days when I used to go to an SNO concert, to hear unfamiliar music played adequately, with occasional mistakes, but a strong cohesive force imparted by Alexander Gibson. During the season, we would thoroughly enjoy these concerts, but would wait for the Edinburgh Festival to hear great orchestras from around the world, which would take the music making to another dimension. This is simply no longer the case, as the level of orchestral playing has improved immeasurably over the last 50 years. We still occasionally get the thrill of a major conductor or soloist at the Festival, with an unusual insight into a particular piece, or a different sound in the brass or woodwind, but I can safely say, having myself sung with some of the world’s great orchestras, that the RSNO play as well as any in the world these days, and I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing the individual members shine in these digital concerts.
This performance of Brahms Four was a very fine one, and I found myself noticing many bits that I had not been aware of before. For example, I hadn’t realised that the trombones do not appear until the last movement, and feature strongly, especially when they play a beautiful quiet section in a rare moment of major harmonies after the flute solo. The succession of variations on a theme that make up the final movement is an example of Brahms genius at using an unchanging system to produce an amazing romantic movement. His depth of knowledge about musical history and form is manipulated into an individual work of beauty, that rivals even the symphonies of Beethoven. The pictures of him as an older man, looking grim and teutonic with his long beard and serious mien, have distracted us from the real man. I am in the process of writing an article in my series for EMR, ‘A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers’, in which I explore Brahms’ importance as a writer of vocal music, and this performance has made me look again at his significance as a symphony writer too.
My worries about the extreme youth of Mr Webster were allayed to a large extent, and I found myself moved by the insights he brought to this familiar work. The symphony progressed in a most satisfactory way, with judicious tempi and a clear unfussy beat, and he brought it to a very fine conclusion. As I remarked at the beginning, the largely minor keys and mood of this symphony don’t make me feel sad or disturbed, and I felt only a great sense of satisfaction at the end.
It must be daunting for such a young man to conduct a big symphony orchestra like the RSNO, and in such a well-known piece, but Angus Webster acquitted himself extremely well. Whether it is sensible to give such a big concert to one so young is a moot point, but presumably his agent and the orchestral management are convinced that such exposure is good at this stage. We are so used to the idea of conductors as experienced men and women, that perhaps it is a good thing to show us someone much younger in this position, but I would myself prefer that a symphonic conductor should gain a bit more experience away from the very top level, and should not be seen as something of a freak show. I hasten to add that I do not see Mr Webster in this light, but the fact of having this debate at all raises questions, and I would prefer to write about his obvious qualities as a fine conductor. A case in point is our own Sir Donald Runnicles, who learned his trade in provincial German opera houses before hitting the big time, a process which doesn’t appear to have done him much harm!
The bottom line is that this was a very fine concert, in an excellent series, and I would encourage our readers to go online and register to watch it in their own time.
Available to stream via the RSNO website.
