The new Music Director of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, Fabien Gabel, born in Paris thirty six years ago, performed wonders with the Berlioz Rob Roy Overture. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra had not performed the work, despite its name, in the Usher Hall for at least fifty years, if ever.
The pre-concert talk, regrettably back upstairs on the top floor, was entirely about the Overture and how bad it most probably was going to be. At its first performance in 1833 Hector Berlioz was so ashamed of what he had written that he went home and burned the score. But as a Prix de Rome scholar in Rome he had sent a copy back to Paris as evidence that he was working away at composition, and it is that copy that has survived.
After telling us the background, Michael Tumelty told us there was time to hear a sixteen minute long recording he had brought from sometime and somewhere in the past. Whilst we were listening Michael, an experienced lecturer, gesticulated his views as it went along as if in several diverse blocks. What is fascinating and good about the pre-concert talks is just how varied they are both in structure and approach.
Expecting the worst, what we heard from the RSNO was a bright and lively and much faster Overture with the memorable wha hae wi’ tune coming through several times, no silent moments and some lovely cor anglais playing. And three minutes were knocked off - thirteen in all.
We were looking forward to Lisa Milne who for twenty years has been one of Scotland’s most talented and best known soprano voices. In an impressive and loud voice she started by telling us in English that there was an error in our programmes in the order of singing. But when she started on Joseph Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne Lisa Milne was singing much more softly in the protected dialect of the French language spoken in the Auvergne known as Occitan, familiar only to those who have travelled those parts. Sure enough we were given a translation in the programme - but those around me said they found her hard to hear unfortunately. Except I am sure for the oft repeated Hush, hush - Tchut, tchut in Occitan.
After the interval Zoë Kitson’s cor anglais was again a treat in César Franck’s solid and safe Symphony in D minor.
I am even more convinced that a few words of introduction or explanation from the conductor, especially when he is new to us, really would go down a treat. Fabien Gabel came and went, and we know him no better. After all, even if he has a broken French accent we at the Usher Hall have for the past six and a half years been quite used to the Denève effect.
Event: Friday 24 February 2012, 7.30 pm