Just as we judge their age when we look at buildings so it is in music. The concert started with late Victorian, moved to mid twentieth century and ended with late eighteenth century - just when Edinburgh’s New Town was starting.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1847-1937) was born in Edinburgh of a musical family and sent very young to Germany to learn music. Back in Edinburgh he married a local girl and was teaching, and also responsible for the music at St George’s Church in Charlotte Square. But he is famous for his 36 years as the Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Benedictus is one of a group of Six Pieces for violin and piano written in 1888, the year he went off the Royal Academy. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra opened the concert with the composer’s own orchestration. Its melodies have some Scottish origins and the whole work is happily typical of late Victorian British compositions.
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) was of Czech and Romanian ancestry. His three movement Symphony No 6 was the last of the six he wrote once he had left Paris on the arrival of Hitler’s soldiers and settled in the United States. He completed the Symphony in 1953. It starts in a very modern, even abstract, mode and settles to a work with great periods of calm interrupted with giant busyness and ends with the quiet that Martinů yearned for in his life.
The Ecclesiastical Latin came after the interval with Mozart’s Requiem and the RSNO Chorus. Timothy Dean, the Director of the Chorus, is to be congratulated for although every member of his Chorus will have, no doubt, studied Latin in their youth it is another matter getting the pronunciations correct within the text, and fitting for Mozart’s setting of the Mass. The performance was a delight to follow because the diction was so clear.
The clarity was enhanced by the four soloists. There are passages in the Requiem when all four sing in turn. For a young person just beginning a musical education, this was a good opportunity to demonstrate the difference between soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor and bass voices.
The Usher Hall was packed with every ticket sold. At lot of the reason, I suspect, was for the first glimpse of the man who next year becomes the Orchestra’s Music Director, Peter Oundjian. He took his chance to address us with great warmth and excitement between the Mackenzie and the Martinů. He was saying farewell to horn player, John Logan, who after 17 years, is off to the Scottish Conservatoire.
And what of the new Music Director’s accent? After all we have been used to broken French. For the future we’ll be listening to Charterhouse Canadian with Transatlantic Street Wisdom. For very good measure he made the point that he had some Scottish blood in him. He could tell that the audience was pleased to have him.
Event: Friday 28 October 2011 7.30pm