Glasgow Life’s classical offering should not rely solely on RSNO
Artists-in-Residence, Minimal and The Piano have vanished without any new ventures to replace them
1950s. So too came the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Bolshoi, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – and that was just in the first few months. The GRCH’s International Seasons lasted for two decades and closed in 2010, with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and Angela Hewitt.
In 2009 we saw the formation of what is now called Glasgow Life and the appointment of Svend Brown as its director of music. “I can’t afford to bring the big orchestras,” Brown told The Herald’s Michael Tumelty, explaining his decision to end the International Seasons. “But I can afford to bring the great soloists and, on occasion, to bring the large ensembles. […] What I wanted to offer, above all, was range.” That range meant Minimal, The Piano, the Artists-inResidence (Pavel Haas and Elias quartets, pianist Llyr Williams) plus one-off events like the audacious 2010 staging of James Dillon’s Nine Rivers or visits from Hespèrion XXI, the Gabrieli Consort, the Tallis Scholars, Ars Nova and Theatre of Voices. Brown won Glasgow the status of Unesco City of Music and instigated the Big Big Sing community choirs project, which got thousands of people singing.
There is plenty of griping I could do, too, which is inevitable. I could mention the shamefully small turnout for elder stateswoman pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja – victim of that deadly Glasgow Life marketing interface – or the time when Steve Reich and Philip Glass clashed on the same weekend as Tectonics and split the audience. I could question the wisdom of an indefinite series on minimalism, a brand of 20th-century music whose meaningful heyday happened 40 years ago, or whether Glasgow really needs to hear more of Llyr Williams, a pianist who already appears regularly with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and at Brown’s East Neuk Festival.
But these are the kind of healthy debates possible when there is an actual programme to debate. The broader impact of bringing popular giants like Reich and Glass to town on a single weekend reached a huge new audience. Brown said the point of Minimal was “wedge-shaped” development – that “new music audiences in Scotland are typically small and not well provided for in terms of range of repertoire,” he told me in 2012. “I didn’t want to go in saying: ‘We’ll do a Kurtág season,’ and play to four people. […] If we attract 2,500 people to see Glass, I’d hope we can get 500 of them back to see something by Stuart MacRae.”
Brown’s contract at Glasgow Life ended in April and he has not been replaced. That was a year after the arrival of David Laing who previously managed the MAMA Group (operator of UK venues including the HMV Hammersmith Apollo, Forum, Institute and Picture House). In a recent interview, Laing told me he is “no curator” himself and that “as a general direction of travel we want to bring in exactly the right person for the right project at the right time”.
During the interview I asked several times how he plans to gauge what the right projects are if he doesn’t have the right specialists working within the organisation, but Laing gave no clear answer on that point. “First thing is to be driven by audiences and to look at where there might be a gap in classical provision in the city,” he said. “Now, if you’re knowledgeable about it – and you’ll be more knowledgeable about this than me because I’m not a specialist – you’ll look at [a] particular repertoire that isn’t performed very often.”
So whom is he taking his advice from on the ‘gaps’ in classical provision? He mentioned Svend Brown and Gavin Reid at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, two men who are no longer in relevant posts.
He also made frequent references to Krishna Thiagarajan, chief executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, whose new RSNO Centre opened in 2015 to a tune of about £19 million from the Scottish Government, Creative Scotland, private and trust sponsors, the RSNO and Glasgow City Council. While Laing assured me that the cost of the new building did not soak up funds for Glasgow Life’s future classical music programmes, he did acknowledge that “we took a strategic step onwards with our relationship with the RSNO and the new RSNO Centre. And thanks to that building, the amount of classical that’s been performed in Glasgow over the past year is actually quite a bit higher.” The indication seems to be that he is happy for the RSNO to shape Glasgow Life’s classical music offering – which would be a worrying delegation of responsibilities in terms of creative scope and institutional cosiness.
This season sees just one classical music event happening under the Glasgow Life banner. (In March, The Sixteen performs James MacMillan’s Stabat Mater as part of a month-long celebration of the composer’s music in partnership with the BBCSSO, the RCS and the Hebrides Ensemble.)
Is one event per season what we should henceforth expect? Laing wouldn’t put a number on it, though suggested he “would like to see Minimum (sic) come back”. He has no plans to bring back The Piano but said we might see a reinstatement of the Artists-inResidence: “Krishna has some strong ideas about associating the building and certain artists.” He also said that, long-term, “we have a key ambition to bring the International Seasons back. There’s an ambition in the city for Glasgow to have that level of profile. Krishna has an ambition to have the RSNO engage with other orchestras of that level.”
A positive reading would be that Laing is a realistic straight-talker doing the tough job of balancing budgets with a holistic and populist perspective of the arts, and that he values the role of commercial stakeholders in a cultural ecosystem as messy and vibrant as Glasgow’s. “It’s not my brief to provide classical music that the orchestras aren’t providing,” he told me.
“For me it’s as wide as engaging with commercial providers in common with the Clubcommission in Berlin so that we can ensure a thriving music scene, as opposed to what’s happening in Edinburgh.”
But as yet he shows little sign of creative vision at the top of a labyrinthine bureaucracy – the kind of vision needed to put the city’s venues on a level with inventive programming at the Southbank in London or the Sage in Gateshead.
There is immense latent potential in Glasgow’s municipal resources, but right now it seems more wasted than ever. Miranda Heggie FOR a 17-date Scottish tour, Scottish Opera’s new staging of The Elixir of Love sees Donizetti’s early 19th century masterpiece set nearly a century later, in a 1920s English country garden. The large hedges which form much of the set provide an innovative canvas for recounting the tale, with cast members peeking their heads through little holes in the foliage, and hiding behind them. Exuding a real sense of fun, the little quirks really work here. Director Oliver Platt’s production is one which strikes a rare balance of being genuinely funny yet beautifully sincere, all the while underpinned by an artistic excellence from those on stage and in the pit, with Kelly Rourke’s pithy English translation delivered with clarity and conviction.
The instrumental arrangement by Derek Clark, Scottish Opera’s head of music, sees Donizetti’s orchestra score distilled down to the unusual, yet apt, combination of string trio, guitar and French horn.
Ellie Laugharne sings the role of Adina convincingly, with a rich, potent voice, and Scottish Opera emerging artist Elgan Llyr Thomas gives a persuasive and tender depiction of her lover Nemorino. Baritone James Cleverton shines as the larger-than-life quack doctor Dr Dulcarama, giving an entertaining and vocally astute performance in his Scottish Opera debut. At the Macphail Centre, Ullapool tomorrow and An Lanntair, Stornoway on Saturday.
‘‘ We have a key ambition to bring the International Seasons back. There’s an ambition in the city for Glasgow to have that level of profile Theatre
Mary Brennan IT IS a very knowing excursion into political farce, this week’s offering at A Play, A Pie and A Pint, and astutely framed, too. Lacing serious environmental concerns with some all-out daftness and well-observed comedy is a canny tactic. Audiences who get a good laugh are more inclined to listen to what comes along next.
As soon as we see Steven McNicoll’s genial Frank, it is clear all’s not well: the towelling bathrobe/no trousers look isn’t the usual garb of a career diplomat. Not that Frank has any connections with diplomacy. He’s in Alaska, and out of his depth as the hastily appointed Foreign and Commonwealth Office Chief Scientific Adviser to the Arctic Council. He’s speechless, quite literally, having left his address to the council on the plane. Hapless Frank knows nothing about maritime expansion in the North West Passage. Or about drilling for oil or minerals in the ancient territories of Alaska’s indigenous peoples. However, in a series of cameo encounters, he meets various individuals who do know, and who represent conflicting sides of the agenda.
Since writer Kieran Lynn and director Tony Cownie didn’t have a cast of thousands on hand, audiences are instead further entertained by two redoubtable characters. Various women are portrayed with aplomb, four different accents and changes of costuming by Nicola Roy, and Various men by Jimmy Chisholm in a tour de force of two-faced (make that six-faced) acting-up by Jimmy Chisholm. Lynn’s script is fast-moving and funny but – like Cownie’s direction and the spot-on performances throughout – it never sacrifices thoughtprovoking themes for another joke about inept or ill-informed decision-makers. Sponsored by Heineken