Thrills EIF dance audiences
Usher Hall JJJ
Simon Rattle’s first appearance in Edinburgh as the LSO’S artistic director was a somewhat underwhelming affair. Bernstein’s Symphony No.2, for orchestra and solo piano, is based on WH Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety. A programmatic work, it closely follows the characters in Auden’s story with the moody piano lines often echoed by small groups of orchestral instruments. The rhythmic ebb and flow of the work was often patchy and some of the entries were slightly late.
Unusually for Bernstein, it’s a rather intimate and reflective work – until The Masque when pianist Krystian Zimerman lets rip with some dazzling jazz-riffs accompanied by double bass, drum kit and wood blocks. Very much of its time, the piece would have benefited from a new commission of imaginative visuals, or dance, to give it context.
And while the LSO pulled out all the stops for Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances Op 72, pairing Bernstein with composers he had a closer affinity with, like Mahler, Copland and Ives would’ve been more insightful.
It was only in Janáček’s Sinfonietta, brilliantly executed by an augmented brass section with the dynamic cellos, basses and whooping flutes that the orchestra and Rattle showed the thrilling potential of their partnership.
SUSAN NICKALLS 0 Simon Rattle partners with both Mahler and the LSO Usher Hall JJJJJ
There were two very exciting relationships at play here: the newly emerging formal partnership between the London Symphony Orchestra and music director Simon Rattle, and the long-established one between Rattle and Mahler. The sole object of this second EIF concert was the Ninth Symphony. The outcome was mind-blowing.
It’s a work open to all manner of interpretation, the key to which is never truly revealed until the final movement and the dissolving final bars, where resolution is either a resigned expression of mortality, or a deeply profound acceptance of the undying beauty of nature and existence.
Rattle kept us guessing, though his seething interpretation, and the scorching sounds he elicited from the LSO over the symphony’s 90 minutes, were in no way equivocal. This was a probing, intelligent and supremely focused performance, its massive opening movement unfolding with granite-like density, its elemental themes a disturbing premonition of what is to come.
The central movements – a Ländler-inspired scherzo and the engineered chaos of the Rondo-burleske – were vivid examples of this orchestra’s hair-raising virtuosity, an ecstatic foil to the visionary intensity of the finale which, to answer the question, ended in a breathtaking whisper of peace and hope. KEN WALTON Leith Theatre JJJJ
Scottish composer, musician and songwriter Anna Meredith holds a singular position in the UK’S musical landscape, one in which her devoted fanbase tends to be drawn largely from either BBC Radio 3 listeners (she has composed many times for the Proms, and also presented BBC broadcasts) or Scottish listeners, who recall her deserved 2016 Scottish Album of the Year Award win for Varmints. The last time she played this venue, it was with the music of that record and her live band. This time, given the occasion and the involvement of Edinburgh International Festival, she was able to bring the full strength of the Southbank Sinfonia to Varmints.
The show began with the spectacular, a strident, horndriven rendition of the elemental Nautilus, and progressed through R-type’s urgent repurposing of house music for a full orchestra and the light indie-pop of Taken. With Meredith out the front of the stage in an impressive silver cape, making
0 ‘Classical composer for the Youtube generation’ Anna Meredith
keyboards and clarinet look positively popstar-like, she was surrounded by the combined Sinfonia and her own group, a pop-classical arrangement of cello, tuba, guitar and drums; and looked
down upon by a morphing film of stylised cat and dog videos, a visual representation of her reaffirmed status as the classical composer for the Youtube generation. DAVID POLLOCK