Review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Photo: Chris Christodoulou  

By Jane Compton

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, led by Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati, opened the concert on 21 August at the Usher Hall with a flawless performance of the four movement orchestrated version of Ravel’s  Le tombeau de Couperin.  One of the composer’s most personal works, Ravel’s tribute to friends who died fighting in the First World War is styled upon a Baroque dance suite.  An entertaining start to the evening, the prominence given to the melancholy tones of the oboe served as a reminder of this lively music’s underlying memorial nature.

This was followed by the world premiere of the EIF commission Blossoming II, a compellingly beautiful short piece of music for chamber orchestra by the internationally renowned Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa that he based loosely on his 2007 string quartet Blossoming.  An important aspect of Hosokawa’s aesthetic and his originality is that he seeks to fuse the sounds of the natural world with music in a very close relationship. 

In this work the stages of growth and decay of a lotus, a symbol denoting the essence of enlightenment in Buddhism, are meticulously charted.  The journey begins when the plant stem is ascending purposefully up through the murky depths of the water towards the surface where it will finally emerge and reveal its existence.

Hosokawa’s unique musical language was interpreted with care and attention to detail by Ticciati, and realised with precision by the SCO musicians who used western instruments to produce sounds that were often eerie and other-worldly. Delicate, wispy music introduced by the strings materialised out of the silence in one long, sustained note in the middle register that represented the surface of a pond.  Sounds lower than this note echoed the plant’s energy under the water and sounds that were higher portrayed the world above.  The rapturous applause afterwards intensified when the Japanese composer briefly appeared on stage to take a bow. 

For the final part of the programme the SCO were joined by over a hundred young singers aged 16 to 24 from the National Youth Choir of Scotland, and by two soloists, baritone Simon Keenlyside and mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch who replaced Magdalena Kožená at short notice.  During the superb rendition of Duruflé’s atmospheric nine part Requiem the excellent acoustics of the grand auditorium were fully exploited as the singers’ voices soared upwards in a series of crescendos that delighted the audience.  

For those who missed a wonderful evening there will be another chance to hear the music on 15 September 2011 when it is broadcast as Performance on Three on BBC Radio 3 (90 – 93 FM).  The SCO will bring the Edinburgh International Festival to a dramatic finale on Sunday 4 September at the eagerly anticipated Virgin Money Fireworks Concert in the stunning setting of Princes Street Gardens where the talented musicians are set to perform an eclectic programme of music inspired by Asia, Arabia and the east.  Over 100,000 fireworks, tonnes of explosives and hundreds of firing sequences launched from Edinburgh Castle will be choreographed by Pyrovision alongside pieces that include Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Glinka’s Overture from Ruslan and Ludmilla.

The Edinburgh International Festival runs from 12 August – 4 September. Browse and book online at eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000.

Princes Street Gardens tickets are still available for the Virgin Money Fireworks concert on Sunday 4 September. Visit eif.co.uk/virginmoneyfireworks for more information and to book.

This article has also been published on stv.tv which features reviews, previews and features from this year's Festival.

East Meets West: Close Encounters of a Cultural Kind

By Mateusz Jazdzewski

Sir Roger Norrington

This year’s Edinburgh International Festival deals with the meeting of two cultures – east and west. Elements of the programme, curated by Festival Director Jonathan Mills, could be viewed as challenging the tastes of audiences often perceived to be euro-centric. However sceptics may come across a surprising revelation – that western culture’s love of the east is not in fact a novelty but has been happening over hundreds of years.

The first encounters between European and Oriental cultures can be found in ancient Greece, when philosophy and art began to mingle its ideas with the heritage of conquered cultures such as Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt. But the real flourishing in the fashion for orientalism took place in the 18^th and start of the 19^th centuries – a cultural phenomenon resulting from colonial expansion in the east. European travellers made grand tours to the Middle East, Africa, China and beyond and those artists now known as the Romantics began to focus their work on the unknown exoticism of the east.

Tomorrow’s Opening Concert sets the tone for the rest of the Festival with Robert Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri, performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conducted by Sir Roger Norrington. The oratorio is based on Thomas Moore’s tale Lalla-Rookh, the beautiful myth of the fallen angel Peri who tries to re-enter paradise by finding the gift held dearest by the gods. It is one of the brightest musical examples of 19^th century European orientalism, blending the European aesthetic with eastern poetry. So successful was the fusion of these factors that the piece became one of Schumann’s greatest successes.

Das Paradies und diePeri seems the perfect choice for the Festival 2011 Opening Concert, with the spellbinding music providing the soundtrack as we begin to consider relations between east and west and the changes they have experienced over the years and the centuries.

The piece was written at a time when Europe was expanding and often imposing its own rules and traditions on conquered lands, but for contemporary audiences it also reflects the desire of this year’s Festival programme to present the beliefs and achievements of other cultures with curiosity and respect. And the value of showcasing Asian art on the European stage can also be seen not only as artistic but political, as we reassess the role of our continent on the world stage. Through shared art and culture, 21^st-century Europe, and indeed the whole world, can promote and understand the shifting parameters of the global landscape.

Das Paradies und die Peri
Robert Schumann

Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Sir Roger Norrington Conductor
Edinburgh Festival Chorus

Tickets available from eif.co.uk/opening or 0131 473 2000