RSNO unveils a vibrant and innovative 2010-11 Season
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) builds on its recent successes with its most ambitious and compelling programme in many years
The first of two celebratory closing seasons led by Music Director Stéphane Denève
TEN OUT OF 10 – great works from the first decade of the 21st Century
A new Sunday afternoon RSNO Chamber Series for Edinburgh and Glasgow
Outstanding level of guest conductors and soloists perfectly matched to repertoire
Naked Classics broadens its adventurous scope and goes to Dundee for first time
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) today announces a bold and confident programme for its new Season. From September 2010 to May 2011 Scotland’s national orchestra will present 66 concerts across Scotland, covering over 10,000 miles and performing to 100,000 concert-goers.
The new Season will build upon the notable successes of the last twelve months, which have seen the Orchestra once again break audience records and smash traditional assumptions about new and young audiences for classical music. A few statistics:
§ Subscriber levels are at their highest in at least two decades
§ The Orchestra is enjoying its greatest average attendance in at least fifteen years (the audience at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh alone is now 50% larger than when Stéphane Denève first took up the baton in 2005)
§ 1,500 young people aged under 26 are now members of the RSNO's online social network, translating as a 25% growth in ticket sales
§ A 15% growth in children at RSNO concerts: 3,000 under 16s attended in the 2009-10 Season, the majority through the RSNO’s highly successful Standard Life Passport to Music free ticket scheme
§ An average of 110 young people attended each RSNO concert
StéphaneDenève’s impact with the RSNO can be recognised as a markedly successful period in the organisation’s 120-year history. Since 2005 the RSNO has enjoyed enormous critical success for its live performances, appearances in continental Europe and its recordings. Scottish audiences have warmly welcomed the re-emergence of romantic and impressionistic French music within the Orchestra’s core repertoire, often enhanced by personal commentary from the stage.
TEN OUT OF 10
Entering the second decade of the 21st century and closing the chapter on the first, Scotland’s national symphony orchestra celebrates the richness and accessibility of the music of our time. TEN OUT OF 10 is a series of ten works written between 2000 and 2010 which have something vital and vibrant to say to modern audiences. Encompassing a huge diversity of styles, these works represent a decade in which composers have used their inspiration to express the spirit of the times, the mystery of the universe, the depth of human emotion, the tragedy of contemporary events and the atmosphere of a bygone age. The works appear throughout the forthcoming season, sitting among more familiar works of the orchestral repertoire, and eight out of the ten works will be conducted by Stéphane Denève.
TEN OUT OF 10 Works (in order of performance date)
James MacMillan Three Interludes from The Sacrifice
Guillaume Connesson Aleph
Kaija Saariaho Orion
Helen Grime Virga
Magnus Lindberg Graffiti
Oliver Knussen Violin Concerto
Esa-Pekka Salonen Insomnia
Christopher Rouse Rapture
Peter Lieberson Neruda Songs
John Adams On the Transmigration of Souls
The Orchestra is also using the opportunity to expand its well established Naked Classics series to incorporate a contemporary work, as the second concert in the 2010-11 season examines conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen’s hyperactive and intense 20 minute work for Orchestra, Insomnia.
Consistent with its commitment to accessibility, the RSNO will be rolling out a range of initiatives which will enhance appreciation of the ten works, contextualise them in new ways, and engage the public in an active dialogue about the music of our time. The series also benefits from its own interactive website, www.tenoutof10.org.uk, live as of 30 March.
RSNO Music Director StéphaneDenève:
“This new season is certainly the most creative and bold one since I became Music Director of the RSNO in 2005. I would like to thank our steadily growing Scottish audiences for their loyalty and their curiosity, which is allowing me to propose such an ambitious and exciting project like our TEN OUT OF 10 series or, indeed, the hugely successful Naked Classics series. Add to that many world-class soloists and guest conductors, our wonderful musicians perfectly in tune with my musical dreams, and you will foresee a musical journey that is a testimony to the forward thinking nature of the RSNO!"
Conductors and soloists perfectly matched with great symphonic works
RSNO Music Director Stephane Deneve’s performances include the continuing examination of the orchestral works of Roussel (The Spider’s Feast), return performances of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the Scottish première of Magnus Lindberg’s Grafitti for chorus and orchestra, and, to conclude the season, Beethoven’s Symphony No9 Choral.
At the heart of programming for the 2010-11 season is an acute sensitivity to matching guest conductors and soloists to repertoire with which they are particularly associated. RSNO Conductor Laureate Neeme Järvi’s yearly visit to Scotland is a season highlight. The revered Maestro returns to his roots with the RSNO in unmissable performances of Shostakovich’s epic Symphony No7 Leningrad. Meanwhile, another esteemed member of the RSNO Artistic Team – Walter Weller - conducts two sumptuous fin-de-siècle works from Vienna – Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta and Korngold’s Violin Concerto. Also returning from the Järvi stable is son Kristjan, a now established favourite with RSNO audiences, who will conduct a remarkable programme including Sibelius’s final two symphonies - the enigmatic Sixth and majestic Seventh - played consecutively as the second half of the concert.
English conductor Paul Daniel leads the Orchestra with three performances of Elgar’s Symphony No1. Dane Thomas Søndergård makes a welcome return following his sensational appearance last season, with his countryman Nielsen’s Symphony No4 Inextinguishable. Krzysztof Urbański makes his début with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No5, a lesser known Dvorak Symphony that he is currently championing. Miguel Harth-Bedoya enjoys a Latin-flavoured programme with a rare Scottish performance of 20th century Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera’s thrilling Four Dances from Estancia. Roberto Abbado, always at home in central European romantic repertoire, conducts two of Brahms’ moving choral works, Nänie and Song of Destiny. Peter Oundjian also conducts Brahms for his welcome return visit, this time his Symphony No3.
Joining the RSNO for the first time are Christian Vásquez and Gilbert Varga. Vásquez is a product of the internationally known Venezuelan El Sistema, and will conduct the Orchestra’s Valentine’s concerts; meanwhile Gilbert Varga brings authentic Hungarian flair to the two most famous orchestral works of fellow countryman Zoltan Kodály. Another new face to the Orchestra, electrifying Russian maestro Andrey Boreyko, conducts Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No6 Pathétique.
Of the solo violinists, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Leila Josefowicz and Nicola Benedetti will provide particular highlights. Sol Gabetta returns, after a memorable debut last season, in Dvořák’s cello concerto, and mezzo-soprano Kelly O’Connor’s brings to Scotland Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs – the work that she has sung all across the US following the untimely death of the dedicatee Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
Pianists feature strongly this year. Marc André Hamelin, Paul Lewis, John Lill, Imogen Cooper, Stephen Hough, and Nicholas Angelich make up a formidable sextet of international stars. Meanwhile Dejan Lazic, Alice Sara Ott and the remarkable Gabriela Montero, famed for her stupendous skills as an improviser, provide refreshing youth and inspiration.
A special season highlight will be Nathaniel Shilkret’s Trombone Concerto. Composed for Tommy Dorsey in 1945 and subsequently lost shortly afterwards, the work has been faithfully reconstructed by former RSNO Trombone Brian Free and will be performed by the RSNO’s current Principal Trombone, Dávur Juul Magnussen.
New Chamber Music Series for Glasgow and Edinburgh
In May 2009 a small group of RSNO musicians presented a chamber music concert at Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios. What followed was the collective realisation that both musicians and audiences might enjoy more regular chamber music presentations. The 2010-11 season sees the birth of The RSNO Chamber Series, three intimate ensemble performances - at Dovecot Studios, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh and at St Mary’s Cathedral, Great Western Road, Glasgow – which set the Orchestra’s musicians in a distinctly different musical arena. The first series includes a number of the unqualified masterpieces of the chamber music canon – Schubert’s Octet, Brahms’ F Major Quintet, and Bartok’s String Quartet No 3, contrasted with an entertaining selection of works from different eras and for different combinations of instruments.
Naked Classics
The RSNO’s acclaimed Naked Classics series is a ground-breaking concert presentation featuring Paul Rissmann and the RSNO. Naked Classics explores the stories behind the scores using an innovative mixture of projections, lighting, on-stage demonstration with the Orchestra and interviews with conductor and players. The concert format first appeared in Glasgow in 2006 and made its hugely successful Edinburgh début following the Orchestra’s return to the Usher Hall in October 2009.
Appropriately for a concert series that is renowned for its innovation, Naked Classics itself sees further development for 2010-11. The scope of the series broadens to encompass insights on the old and the new. One of the masters of the authentic performance movement, Roy Goodman, will examine Haydn’s last symphony, No104 London; and the final concert in the series will feature Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 2002 Insomnia, a work that owes much to the composer’s recent years in Los Angeles and contact with Hollywood. The series also makes its important first steps outside the Central Belt, with a performance in Dundee’s Caird Hall, supported by an extensive community programme run in conjunction with Dundee City Council Leisure and Communities Department.
RSNO Chief Executive Simon Woods:
“Over the past five years we have worked very hard to be in the position we find ourselves in today, with audiences growing consistently year-on-year, more and more young people in the concert hall, and a strong and stable financial base. From this position of confidence we have been able to plan a 2010-11 season that is as strong and imaginative as any we have done in recent years, with some really fascinating matches of standard symphonic repertoire with great conductors and soloists, and a new and committed engagement with the culture of our time. It is going to be an exciting journey.”
RSNO Corporate Partnerships
The RSNO continues to grow its relationships with corporate partners across the country, strengthening its reputation for delivering rewarding associations through a successful corporate support programme.
The RSNO’s partnership with TOTAL E&P UK Limited is now in its sixth year, testimony to the mutual benefits derived from the association. This year’s activity includes the continuation of the TOTAL Denève Series across Scotland and the creation of a community composition project in TOTAL’s corporate heartland of the North East of Scotland.
The RSNO and Standard Life Passport to Music initiative continues to go from strength to strength. Already in this current season 200 more tickets have been sold to under 16s via the Standard Life Passport to Music scheme than in the whole of last season.This long term initiative, generously sponsored by Standard Life, aims to encourage more young people to attend live classical concerts and helps young people to gain more from the concert experience. The dedicated website for children at www.passport2music.org.uk has enjoyed over 1,500 visits and over 400 children take part in the attendance incentive scheme which promotes repeat visits to concerts and encourages the young critics to write their own reviews of concerts they’ve seen.
The Orchestra’s partnership with ScotRail, the RSNO’s Official Transport Provider, continues to provide vital transport for RSNO musicians and staff across Scotland.
The RSNO is delighted to welcome onboard new sponsor The Miller Group Limited. The Miller Group are supporting a pioneering three year programme of activities with Rachel House, Scotland’s first children’s hospice.
The RSNO would like to thank all of its sponsors, corporate donors, corporate partners and media partners who make a crucial contribution to the work of the Orchestra: TOTAL E&P UK Limited, Standard Life, Shell U.K. Limited, Capital Solutions, The essentiagroup, Exxon Mobil, The Courier, ScotRail, Park’s Motor Group, Loganair, Cameron House on Loch Lomond, The Miller Group Limited, The Weir Group PLC, BBC Radio 3, The Evening Times, Classic FM, Cadenhead’s, Mitchell’s Glengyle, Springbank Distillers Ltd, La Bonne Auberge, BG Group, the BIG Partnership, First Rule Investment Consultancy Ltd, MacRoberts LLP, McGrigors, prg specialised professional recruitment, Smart Graphics, Willis UK & Ireland Ltd, Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Alliance Française Glasgow and The Scottish Council for Development and Industry.
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