It’s always difficult to park in the Merchant City, more so
if you don’t have the change to use the machine in the High Street car park. I
arrived in the area late, as it was, but too late to go round the block twice
and along Bell Street and back up High Street again, and that’s where I found
myself with fewer than ten minutes to go until the start of the concert. At
this point, the rain had abated.
Thanks to my tardiness, I had to sit upstairs, four seats
from the aisle. I was also too late for a little comfort break, so by the time
the 2012 ‘Listen Here!’ curator, BBC SSO Artist-in-Association Matthias
Pintscher, turned to face the orchestra, I was already in distress. The fire alarm in work had sounded for
thirty minutes only four hours earlier, and my ears had barely recovered when
the almighty mess that is the Second Movement (’Putnam’s Camp, Redding,
Connecticut’) from Charles Ives’ ‘3 Places in New England’ had me almost
weeping with agony into my sleeve. I am not familiar with Ives’ work, but at
least I know that I’ll have to listen at home with one hand on the volume
control. To complete Part I, American violinist Jennifer Koh gave us a fine
performance of Bartok’s second Violin Concerto, but I was still to be convinced
that I’d made the correct decision in leaving the house. By the time Part II,
and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, was over, I was relieved, in more ways than one,
and resolved to remain in the hall for Part III.
Scott Mitchell, the well-known RCS accompanist and chamber
music coach, delved into the realms of the plinky-plonky with John Cage’s
‘Seven Haiku’ which, thankfully, only lasted three minutes. A typical
theatrical SSO performance then followed, with trombones, horns and flutes
sprinkled around the Choir Stalls and Balcony for Charles Ives’ ‘The Unanswered
Question’, before Scott Mitchell returned to play Robert Schumann’s
‘Kinderszenen, Op. 15’ and this, like the Dvorak, was one of the rare truly beautiful moments
in the evening. The wandering minstrels returned to delight us with Giovanni
Gabrielli’s ‘Sonata pian e forte’, which isn’t what you think (the former means
one choir, the latter the two reunited), before the marathon session ended with
a small orchestra playing Aaron Copeland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’ (which features
the clarinet in the Shaker melody ‘Simple Gifts’, of course). That was that, at
nearly 11pm!
One of the many things I love about the BBC SSO is the
chance to participate in an event along with the orchestra. Last year, it was
the orchestra and massed choir, conducted by the delightfully enthusiastic
Andrew Manze, performing ‘Pirates of Penzance’. This year, it was the efficient
German Matthias Pintscher's take on Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Concerto Grosso’ for string orchestra.
Now, what on earth could this poor excuse for a clarinettist find to do in a
string orchestra? Well, it’s not such a quantum leap when you consider that, as
a former member of the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop, I’ve got a violin; not that I
would know what to do with a violin and a violin part. Once I had stuffed
tissue paper in my shoes to dry up the rain that had settled there, it was time
to take my seat. I tried, I really did but, like my desk partner, who was about
9, I was floundering from the start, in spite of the fact that all my notes
were on open strings. However, I enjoyed it, and fulfilled another ambition
along the way. The bucket list hasn’t got much left for me to do.
I had a wee snooze after I got home, so I had to rush to get
to the Saturday evening concert, too. This time, it was easier to park, and
easier to get a seat, though the audience turned out to be larger than anyone
expected. This was the ‘modern’ night, entitled ‘New German Mythmakers’. A
touch of the plinky-plonky, again, with the opener; Aribert Reimann’s 1993
work, ‘Neun Stȕcke fȕr Orchester’. This was followed by Hans Werner Henze’s
1993 composition ‘Sinfonia No. 8. This jarred less than the first piece, and
even though I’m not able to hum or whistle any of it, it wasn’t bad, for a
modern piece, and I’ll need to look out for the episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Hear and Now’ that
will feature it. After the interval, American cellist Joshua Roman was the
featured soloist in Matthias Pintscher’s ‘Reflections on Narcissus’ from 2005,
which was actually worth hearing again, especially the movement were Roman
appeared to play harmonics the whole time. This wasn’t the last of the 28-year
old virtuoso, as he gave a recital after the concert in which he played J.S.
Bach’s ‘Suite No. 3 for Solo Cello’.
Finally, this afternoon’s concert, and the lighter side of
the orchestra, in a programme entitled ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’.
Conducted and presented by Stephen Bell (presumably to avoid a repeat of the
high jinks of last year, when Jamie MacDougall and Billy Differ had the audience
fighting back the tears with their double-entendre double-act), this was billed as a family-friendly concert, and there was a whole host of bored children sprinkled throughout the auditorium. Beginning with
Malcolm Arnold’s ‘Scottish Dance No. 1’, the SSO took a trip around the world
from Scotland to Norway (Grieg), Paris (Cole Porter), Spain (Albeniz), Germany
(Mendelssohn), Austria (Johann Strauss II), Italy (a Neapolitan miscellany
arranged by Gordon Langford) and the Czech Republic (Dvorak). That was just the
first half. After the interval, Russia (Tchaikovsky), China (Tan Dun),
Australia (Grainger), Mexico (Sydney Torch arrangement), Canada (Bob Fanon),
USA (Copeland) and finally back to the UK with ‘Great Songs of Great Britain’
arranged by Bob Farnon, the Canadian who made Guernsey his home. And that was
that, all over for another year, and there’s only one more event to attend in
Glasgow before the summer, proper. More about that next weekend.
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