BBCSSO & RCS: Emerging Conductors’ Showcase
City Halls, Glasgow; 26/06/26
BBCSSO, Martyn Brabbins (presenter), Max Todes, Ethan Osman, Jess Hoskins, Davide Trolton, Jiyun Wang, Marco Orazio Vallone, Euan Safey (conductors), Andrew Duncan (tuba)
Glasgow’s City Halls on the afternoon of Friday 26th June was the venue for the 5th annual Emerging Conductors Showcase event, whereby Visiting Professor of Conducting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Martyn Brabbins, introduced a programme showcasing emerging conducting talent from the UK and beyond, as the culmination of a 5-day course under his tutelage and the auspices of the Conservatoire. As last year, there was something of a holiday atmosphere in the hall, as again this was the last engagement of the orchestra before their summer break and, for two of their number, their valedictory appearance with the band. Principal second violin Jamie Campbell is moving on to a new post after a few years with the orchestra; principal timpanist Gordon Rigby retires after over 48 years. Recently-appointed Associate Leader of the RSNO, Shlomy Dobrinsky, was our Guest Leader for the afternoon. As last year, Martyn Brabbins’ introductory remarks praised the BBC and its SSO for their steadfast support of music education and, in particular, unwavering collaboration in the annual Showcase event, including 3 days of rehearsals and the performance. No UK orchestra does more than the BBCSSO, he said, to nurture the development of conducting talent.
The performance began with a World Premiere. American composer Andrew Jacob, currently completing a Masters in Composition at the RCS, indulged his fascination with intricate rhythms and mechanical automata in his short piece for large orchestra ‘In the Hall of the Clockwork Dancer’. Young Italian conductor Davide Trolton already holds a Masters in Conducting from Bologna, as well as an impressive CV of awards and prestigious assistantships, and has been selected to pursue further study at the same level at the Royal Northern College of Music. The challenge of rehearsing and bringing to performance a new work is not to be underestimated. When the work has complex and irregular metres, the challenge is all the more daunting. Davide met these challenges with aplomb and the BBCSSO made it look easy, evoking the quirky movements of an energetic, graceful but glitchy automaton. The same 7/8 time, split as 2+2+3, that delivers the “dropped stitch” rhythm of the second theme of the finale of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto is the “normal” of the robot’s gyrations, from which the departures are even more bizarre. A super piece and a great concert opener, it received a persuasive and virtuosic outing. We were to hear more from Davide later in the afternoon.
Vaughan Williams’ 1954 Tuba Concerto, described by Martyn Brabbins as “not the only tuba concerto in existence, but easily the best” (no argument from me), uses a much smaller orchestra and was performed with the orchestra’s principal tuba, Andrew Duncan, as soloist. Cambridge and RCS graduate, and founder of the Cavatina Orchestra, Max Todes, whose conducting of his own arrangement of a Scarlatti sonata with the Hebrides Ensemble at an RCS concert I enjoyed back in February, conducted. A delightful, compact 3-movement piece of great charm and whimsy, the concerto abounds in folk-like modal melody, alternating between the playful and the pastoral. The ‘Prelude’ is a strutting march, which morphs occasionally to a jig by means of triplets. Its virtuosic cadenza visits the full compass of the instrument. The slow movement recalls the mood of another ‘Romanza’, that of the 5th Symphony, and a lyrical melody from the first movement of the ‘Sea Symphony’, commemorating those lost doing their duty. Stormier sea imagery inhabits the whimsical rondo ‘Finale’, complete with a waltz for elephants and another virtuosic cadenza, rounded off with a final orchestral flourish. Great to hear it live again (last time for me was probably nearly 5 decades ago) and it was performed with style and mischievous charm. Excellent.
For Benjamin Britten’s 1941 arrangement for reduced orchestra of the second movement of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, subtitled ‘What the Wild Flowers Tell Me’, we had young Italian conductor Marco Orazio Vallone, who is currently pursuing his Masters in the Netherlands in both the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Royal Conservatoire The Hague. A delicate and rather kitsch minuet gives way to episodes of schmaltz, a hectic headlong ländler and a rather boorish march, with little touches of cheeky klezmer in the mix. Marco guided a characterful reading that did justice to Britten’s genius in capturing most of the quirky charm of the original.
After the interval, we had the customary “baton relay” where different conductors take on the different movements of a symphonic work: this year it was Brahms Symphony No. 3. The audience was asked not to clap between the movements. I’ve known all 4 of Brahms symphonies since before my teens, with the Third being the first I got to know inside-out, as it was the first score I followed while listening to a recording, Bruno Walter’s superb 1960 reading with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. A year ago, I was reunited with the LP and the Hawkes Pocket Score.
Melbourne-based New Zealander Euan Safey is the holder of a fellowship with the Australian Ballet and is one of the select few conductors in the current cohort of the Australian Conducting Academy. He took on the first movement, with its ebullient “Frei Aber Froh” motif (with its enigmatic flattened A) and striding, confident first theme. The ensemble sound and dynamic control were excellent and engaging. I like a little more relaxation of tempo into the bridging passages but, to be fair, that is not indicated in the score. Omitting the exposition repeat is rare in modern performance practice. The orchestral colours, both romantic and stormy, in the development were gorgeous, as was the mysterious return to the recapitulation. The sigh of quiet contentment that closes the movement (and the finale) was magical. Surely this was in Elgar’s mind for the closing bars of his Second, and indeed, don’t its opening bars echo the mood of the Brahms?
New York-born orchestral and opera conductor Ethan Osman is in the second year of his Masters at the Royal Academy of Music. He is the founder of the Village Verein chamber orchestra in New York’s Greenwich Village and has been conducting much of the opera productions at RAM, as well as participating in a range of prestigious masterclasses. His reading of the serenade-like Andante was spacious and idyllic without lugubriousness, allowing room for exquisite phrasing from the winds, particularly Maria Gomes’ clarinet. The mysterious and initially rather anxious interlude (that returns in the finale to portend stormy passion, only to be transformed to a shimmering afterglow in its coda) was perfectly pointed. The dynamic balance of brass chording, wind lyricism and string sweetness in the closing bars was magical.
The last of the young conductors was Shanghai-born prizewinning percussionist Jiyun Wang, now studying orchestral conducting with Sian Edwards at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, as well as opera, contemporary music and choral conducting with other professors. She has attended quite a number of prestigious masterclasses, most notably with Marin Alsop. Her Poco allegretto caught the wistful, autumnal melancholy of the movement, with subtle rubato to shape the ebb and flow of the sighing cellos and Chris Gough’s horn in the reprise. The central section with its enigmatically obsessive 3-note phrases, and a moment of tenderness offset by foreboding, was nicely characterful. The final sigh was delicious.
Davide Trolton returned for the Allegro finale to draw it all together. Furtive conspiratorial strings and bassoons whispered rumours of the storm to come, an anxious quote from the slow movement concurred. A snarl from the trombones launched the maelstrom of F-minor passion. Moments of respite were swept aside in the rush to a prolonged climax where the slow movement theme was hammered out and the stormy elements reprised with fury. Only when the fury was spent and the winds picked over the wreckage of the conspiratorial opening theme did they steer it to F-major and the shimmering idyllic afterglow, based on the slow movement quotation, affirm ‘Frei Aber Froh’ (Free But Happy), Brahms’ riposte to Josef Joachim’s ‘Frei Aber Einsam’ (Free But Lonely). Davide’s reading was dramatic, engagingly expressive and totally compelling. Excellent.
Six talented young conductors with bright futures. Conductors’ Showcase remains a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon.