Just about two thousand two hundred concert goers were in our seats in the Usher Hall for this season’s final Friday evening Royal Scottish National Orchestra concert. Before he started to conduct, the Orchestra’s impressive Musical Director, Stéphane Denève, turned towards us with microphone in his hand to introduce the programme. Communicating with the audience like this makes such a difference to an evening's enjoyment.
It is two hundred years since Schumann was born and this season the RSNO has been playing all four of his symphonies led by four well known conductors, each with his own perspective. Stéphane Denève told us No 4 which completed the cycle has long been a favourite of his. Perhaps not so familiar at its start, as it goes along it becomes a well known and much played piece of music.
After the interval Natalie Clein was the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto. When she was 16 she won the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year and since has played all over the world with many top orchestras. Her recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto is highly regarded. It was sheer delight to watch her playing so passionately the Simpson Guadagnini cello made in 1777. This was emotional music written by Elgar at the end of the Great War.
The Orchestra finished with Janáček’s Taras Bulba. Written at the same time as Elgar’s Cello Concerto it could hardly be more different. The music is tragic and tells the story of a Cossack leader who, with his two sons, died in a war against the Poles. Not a crowd-puller, but it was a contrast to the evening’s more familiar pieces.
Stéphane Denève gave us the news that attendances over the whole season in Edinburgh were up by twenty five percent. That is a huge tribute to his leadership of a vibrant and enthusiastic orchestra playing an exciting but appropriate range of music in our recently improved and much loved Usher Hall. We in Edinburgh are so fortunate.
Event: Friday 14 May 2010 7.30 pm