This was an out-of-the-ordinary Friday evening programme from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra if only because the overture, Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio, came after the interval. Between it were two masterpieces written during the Second World War.
The violin player Ursula Heidecker Allan can be relied upon to give a first class prepared pre-concert lecture in the Upper Circle Bar. Playing short snaps on her violin she gave us a valuable insight of what we could expect. Bravely she tackled the horrors of the Nazi regime which were at the root of both the major works of the evening. Not one to gossip, she tells it as she sees it and it was much appreciated.
Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen was written in 1944 initially for eleven solo strings, revised for seven but it was the final version for twenty-three that received it first performance in Zurich early in 1946. And so all twenty-three string players came on stage immediately in front of Thomas Søndergård, the conductor. And each player had a music stand and individual score.
With baton in hand, it was very clear that Thomas Søndergård was taking the lead in a work written by an elderly Srauss who had stayed in his native Bavaria throughout the Second World War. Initially innocent of Nazi intentions Metamorphosen is a deep lament - particularly as one opera house after another, one concert hall after another was destroyed in war. Strauss wrote the words 'In memororiam' at the point in the score where he introduced to the cellos and basses Beethoven's Funeral March from Eroica.
Béla Bartók on the other hand fled his native Hungary in 1940 for the United States to a life of poverty and the onset of leukaemia from which he died in 1945. To help out and whilst in hospital fellow Hungarian musicians with difficulty persuaded him to write a large-scale orchestral work first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in December 1944. Its unusual title comes from the composer's challenge not to a whole orchestra but individual players - and they lived up to expectation in the five movements.
Although playing to a less full than usual Usher Hall, Thomas Søndergård, the Orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor, and his colleagues gave us a concert full of confidence and satisfaction.
Concert: Friday 24th October 2014 at 7.30pm