Latvian-born Baiba Stride was the soloist for Tchaikovsky's much loved Violin Concerto - a work well suited to the fine acoustic of the Usher Hall. She clearly understood this. Maybe the night's conductor pointed her in the right direction. Over the years Jaime Martin as a flautist has played in orchestras on the Usher Hall stage.
The pre-concert talk could so easily have been a very funny after dinner speech. We learned that Margarida Castro, the RSNO's new Associate Principal double bass player, who was leading the conversation and Jaime Martin had come across one another before. He as a flute professor at the Royal College of Music and she a pupil and later in London orchestras. Although Margarida Castro is Portuguese they had Spanish in common. At one point, rather surprisingly, Jaime Martin was stuck for the right word. He knew what it was in German. Fortunately Margarida helped out.
Two cheerful and noisy works followed the interval. Richard Strauss' Don Juan, a tone poem, is often an exam piece with its virtuosic slots, and is descriptive of Spaniard Don Juan's life. But taking a different line from Mozart's Don Giovanni. Jaime Martin had explained that because it ends quietly, with three bumps it can never be used to finish a concert.
Different from what followed, Spaniard Manuel de Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat where we heard suites derived from the symphonic ballet first performed at London's Alhambra Theatre in 1919. The tale of the miller, the mayor and policeman's entanglement with the beautiful woman was what had us so amused - as so vividly described by the conductor at the pre-concert talk.
The concert was great fun. Let's hope Jaime Martin is invited back!
Concert: Friday 4th December 2015 at 7.30pm