RSNO Final Concert of the Season
Usher Hall 12/6/26
Royal Scottish National Orchestra Patrick Hahn (conductor)
Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano)
RSNO Chorus Stephen Doughty (chorus director)
Eleanor Dennis (soprano), Joshua Ellicot (tenor) and Andrew Hamilton (baritone)
A full house welcomed the RSNO to their final Usher Hall concert of the season, a mouth-watering programme of Mendelssohn, MacMillan and Beethoven. A touching speech was given by the ever entertaining Adrian Wilson (principal oboe), which included a farewell to violinist Nigel Mason, who was playing his last concert with the RSNO having made his debut in 1979 when Sir Alexander Gibson was Music Director. He may be one of the few remaining performers who performed under Alec’s notably unclear beat (including myself at Scottish Opera from 1982-85), and it was clear that the orchestra holds Nigel in high esteem.
The concert began with Mendelssohn’s famous Hebrides Overture, premiered in London in 1832, three years after the composer had visited Scotland, and famously endured a nausea-inducing crossing from Iona to Staffa and its renowned Fingal’s Cave. The endlessly memorable tune from the overture is heard immediately, and it is wonderful how this yearning melody somehow conjures up visions of the west coast of Scotland. As a footnote, the deeply moving Morning Mood from Grieg’s ‘Peer Gynt’ always made me think of Norwegian Fjords on a clear morning, but I discovered late in life that, bizarrely, it was written to describe a calm morning in a waterless desert!
Patrick Hahn, whose conducting I have admired often as the Principal Guest Conductor of the RSNO, gave us a beautiful rendition of the overture, rising like the Atlantic to dizzying heights and calm spells. Anyone who has visited Fingal’s Cave will know that, among the extraordinary hexagonal basalt columns, the cave has an amazing cathedral-like acoustic, and Mendelssohn’s music attempts to recreate that sound to some effect.
The second part of the concert was a performance of Sir James MacMillan’s Three Scottish Songs, featuring the beautiful mezzo-soprano voice of Karen Cargill. These songs, set to the poems of William Soutar (1898-1943), were composed individually but make a fine set of three songs, first heard together in 2022. The first two are in Scots while the third is in English.
I had heard the words of the first song, 'The Tryst', before, in a setting written for me by the Orkney composer, Hugh S Pyper, and MacMillan too has set them beautifully to music. It tells of a clandestine meeting between two lovers, and conveys a sense of wonder, awe and melancholy nostalgia, captured to perfection by Karen Cargill. As I have remarked before, we are enormously lucky in Scotland to have three of the world’s finest mezzo-sopranos as compatriots, and Ms Cargill is the doyenne. Hugely successful on the principal stages of the world, it was lovely to hear her singing in a hushed and intense way in these beautiful songs. Her obvious affinity with Soutar’s poetry came over clearly, and her diction was impeccable. The third song, ‘Children’, was perhaps the most deeply felt, as it expressed Soutar’s disgust at the cruelty of war, and in particular, the Spanish Civil War. MacMillan’s orchestration was vivid here, with great crashing blows interspersed with deep empathy for the victims, especially the children. Perhaps a reflection on our own times made this, for me, the high point of the evening.
After the interval, the RSNO played Beethoven’s utterly majestic 9th Symphony, and here I must register my first ever disappointment in Patrick Hahn’s conducting. For me, all the movements, apart mercifully for the slow third, were too fast. In particular, I found the final movement much too fast. I know that metronome timings from Beethoven himself imply that he wanted it this fast, but surely 200+ years have shown that there needs to be some breadth to the tempi throughout. There is a temptation to equate fast with exciting, but, except very occasionally, I think it’s best to resist that temptation!
Let’s talk about the music now, for, as well-known as the 9th is, it is still one of the most revolutionary works of all time. It’s not simply that it was longer than any symphony before, but the challenges it makes on players, singers and audiences are extraordinary, even at more sedate speeds.
The first movement is astonishing, right from the mysterious opening bars, and Beethoven leads us on an amazing journey through many summits and hollows to the final overwhelming unison. The second movement, more or less a scherzo, is wild and adventurous, but leads into a movement of calm tranquil beauty such as we have never experienced before. I love Beethoven’s adagios and this one is perhaps his greatest, played superbly by the RSNO, bringing wonderful solo playing from many principals.
Nothing can prepare us for the opening of the final movement: crashing chords, frenzied instrumental discussions and utterly bizarre recitative outbursts for the cellos. An initial outing for the famous Freude theme, mumbling along indecisively and dispersing almost to nothing, and suddenly, the voice! We know it’s coming, especially when the soloists shuffle on, but still – what a moment!
Sadly, the soloists stood behind the orchestra, severely affecting the balance. I have sung Beethoven 9 many times and I was always extremely annoyed if asked to stand behind the orchestra. It may look better, it may make the balance between the quartet better, but it never makes the performance better. Apart from the solo bass entrance, which is largely accompanied recitative not covered by the orchestra, all the solo singing is fully accompanied and, with the best will in the world, largely inaudible if behind the instruments. So, really, we were only aware that the quartet was singing and virtually all details were lost. Joshua Ellicott seemed to be starting off well in his swaggering ‘Wo, wie seine Sonnen fliegen’, but its dramatic conclusion was lost in the turmoil.
The only soloist with a major individual contribution was Andrew Hamilton, the young baritone who is a member of the ensemble at the Staatsoper, Hamburg. I heard him last September singing a Russian recital with Ian Burnside in the Lammermuir Festival, and was very impressed with his warm expressive voice and fine performance skills. Even stuck in the organ gallery just in front of the chorus, Mr Hamilton came over very strongly in his declamatory entrance: ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Tönen!’ (My friends, not these ‘ugly’ tones!’) He speaks directly to the orchestra, and continues – ‘Let us instead strike up more pleasing and more joyful ones!’, before launching into the famous tune, of which we have heard earlier rumblings. Wherever she sits, the mezzo has a thankless task in Beethoven 9, but at least we had heard Ms Cargill earlier. Eleanor Dennis was the most unlucky of the soloists, due to her position. She seemed to be singing the excruciatingly difficult soprano solo well, but sadly we didn’t really get a chance to hear her properly. I hope we can hear her again soon.
The RSNO Chorus, magnificently trained by Stephen Doughty, were simply awesome, singing from memory in an impressive but uncomfortable-looking pose. Their diction was terrific and they produced a fabulous sound. Hats off especially to the sopranos for tireless singing of impossibly high notes, and special thanks too to the unflagging tenors. I hope they still had voices left for the repeat performance in Glasgow the next evening! The totally deaf Beethoven was cruel to his singers at the end of his life, imagining the sounds in his head, and ignoring the reality of the human voices at his disposal.
The audience went wild at the end, revealing that my misgivings about speeds were out of step with the majority. The performance was signed by the British Sign Language performer, Paul Whittaker, who seemed to be signing the music rather than the words we were hearing. I am afraid I don’t understand why?
Thus we concluded what has been a momentous season, full of wonderful concerts. There were a lot of empty weeks in the season, but a symphony orchestra these days must travel and record to make ends meet. The main consolation for those of us in Scotland is that the RSNO is representing us abroad, and spreading the word that this small country punches well above its weight in classical music and that is something of which we can be proud. Now, over to you Steve Clarke, and our boys in the World Cup!
