Noise rock makes an eloquent voice on nuclear arms
aspects of medical research are shown in a necessary flipside to the obscenity of nuclear weapons, in a world where billions are spent on Trident while the NHS is destroyed by stealth.
After an epilogue of statistics proclaiming the human and financial cost of nuclear arms, it ends, as it must, with a controlled explosion of noise that gives way to squalls of feedback before eventually finding peace at last. evaporating into the ether, though I did part company with the composer at the appearance of the phrase “fractal algorithms” in the explanatory programme note. Fractal algorithms? Aye, right.
These apart, it was classic performances of classics from the mighty Danes, with SCO principal horn Alec Frank Gemmill joining the quartet in a delightful outing for Mozart’s Horn Quintet that featured gorgeous melodies and all the horn acrobatics you could wish for at lunchtime. Am I right in thinking that we don’t hear the Horn Quintet as often as it deserves? I wonder why not?
Thereafter, a meat-on-the-bone performance of Beethoven’s second opus 59 Quartet powered the concert to its close.
There’s something elemental in that great Rasumovsky quartet, something utterly uncompromising; this superlative performance had the music by the neck. Kate Molleson IT WAS a weird way to kick off a two-day residency by one of the world’s great symphony orchestras: 15 musicians on stage gathered around a harpsichord to play Bach’s E Major Violin Concerto with violinist Julian Rachlin hammering out the solo part like a pastiche of overheated pre-baroque-revivalism. I’m not convinced he knew the music all that well given how clunky his corners were and how forced his delivery. It takes some doing to make a joyous piece sound quite so shouty.
Meanwhile conductor Herbert Blomstedt, a whip of a thing aged 89, brought supreme grace and efficiency to the podium. His gestures are nowadays pretty streamlined – an elegant twist of a hand here, an astute point of a finger there – but his vigour is intact and his musicianship is as poised and genial as ever. Blomstedt is a gentleman conductor and his rapport with the Leipzig players was palpable.
In the Bach the effect was light and shapely ensemble playing. In Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony the effect was a lucid and gracious performance – monumental structures built up of refined strata. It was the most gentle and reassuring symphonic Bruckner I’ve heard, those epic long-haul phrases drawn with noble unflappability. Nothing was hysterical or overstated; everything unfolded calmly and rationally with a contented sense of inevitability. The strings glowed, the pizzicato bass lines were graceful, the brass sounded warm and splendid. When the last movement came to its simple close there was a feeling of completeness that didn’t need any bombast to drive home the point. Kate Molleson IT IS a lofty orchestra that chooses Beethoven’s Egmont Overture as an encore. This is music about a Flemish resistance leader who was executed during the Spanish Inquisition: its spirit is violent, indignant, defiant, hardly your classic cheery add-on. But it brought out the fiercest playing we’d heard yet from the Leipzig Gewandhaus and for that it was definitely welcome. Because although the past two nights had showcased the exceptional discipline and elegance of this ensemble, the suaveness of its phrasing, the sleekness of its blend, what felt like it was missing was the kind of abandon and dangerous attack that finally arrived in those brooding Egmont chords.
But it was late in coming. The rest of this second Gewandhaus programme under the graceful hand of 89-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt was beautifully turned out but less than thrilling.
The refinement that had made Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony sound so lucid the previous night now felt sedate in Beethoven’s Leonora No 2 – the lone trumpet was duly heraldic from the choir stalls, the leader played an admirably polished violin solo, but I wanted less politeness and more of the score’s volcanic force.
Likewise we got a well-behaved reading of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Andras Schiff as a supremely welltempered soloist.
This is one of the most explosive concertos ever written – subversive in form, radical in colour palette, audacious for its sheer power – but in Schiff’s hands it was recondite and restrained.
It was hard not to admire the pearly articulation of his octaves and the way he carried the last chord of the first movement into a swift, simple Adagio, but the finale’s restrained elasticity felt like a very organised kind of fun.
Festival Music
of the Renaissance into the realm of sound. And the fact there were two island ministers taking part is hugely significant.
The cast list is impressive: four members of the Scottish Ensemble, including first cello Alison Lawrence; traditional musicians Duncan Chisholm and Neil Johnstone, and a host of 13 singers. Soloists were Isobel Ann Martin – Calum’s daughter – and Calum Iain Macleod, a Free Church minister, whose operatic voice was incredibly moving.
The conductor was Cecilia Weston, who works frequently with Craig on his film scores, and painted this masterpiece to perfection.
A powerful and passionate work, this was the finale to an evening celebrating the spiritual music of the islands.
It was a seminal moment for a community whose faith music used to only be heard behind closed church doors. Now it needs a bigger audience.