What a lovely programme to start a new season of Friday nights at the Usher Hall with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This year we celebrate one hundred years since the birth of Benjamin Britten and whilst his Simple Symphony, for strings only, is far from simple it was a comfortable opener. Memorable was its second movement which is entirely pizzicato. Way back in 1960 Mrs Howells, an RSNO player, was trying to teach me the viola and how I thought pizzicato such a waste of time. But I had not heard the Simple Symphony.
Peter Oundjian, starting his second year, then told us how he, as a ten year old, was chosen by Benjamin Britten for a choral recording. He pointed out that in the era prior to The Beatles there was no greater a musician in this country than Britten, and so for a small boy a very special moment.
James MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No 3 was performed by the world class pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for its UK premier. Indeed Thibaudet had performed its world premier with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra in 2011. It is based on MacMillan’s interest in the ancient practice of writing music on the structure of the Rosary. In the fourth movement, Transfiguration Domini Nostri, the players create a whirlwind before calming down to something quite thoughtful. I found the Concerto very appealing and hope we hear it again before too long.
After the interval a suite of seven movements composed by a former trombonist of the Orchestra - Gustav Holst. Of course, The Planets. Seven planets and seven well known individual pieces not so often played as a whole. Holst was 46 before its first public performance in 1920, and only then did his reputation take off. Neptune was the seventh and final coming to a close with the out-of-sight voices of the Orchestra’s Ladies Chorus slowly, slowly dimming to nothing. A moving end for a full house - for an enthusiastic audience.
Event: Friday 4 October 2013 at 7.30pm