BBCSSO: 90th Anniversary Concert
City Halls, Glasgow, 4/12/2025
BBCSSO, NYCoS, Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor), Stephen Hough (piano), Pumeza Matshikiza (soprano), Beth Taylor (mezzo-soprano), John Findon (tenor), Ashley Riches (bass)
This year the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates the 90th Anniversary of its formation and, on the night of 4th December, a special programme marked 90 years, almost to the day, since its first radio broadcast as the BBC Scottish Orchestra. Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth conducted, starting in festive mood with the world premiere of a new BBC commission from English cellist/singer/composer of Jamaican heritage Ayanna Witter-Johnson, ‘Bacchanale’. The orchestra was then joined by an old friend (since 1983), pianist Stephen Hough, in Edvard Grieg’s evergreen Piano Concerto in A minor. The second half was devoted to Michael Tippett’s oratorio ‘A Child of Our Time’, the orchestra joined by the National Youth Choir of Scotland and 4 soloists: soprano Pumeza Matshikiza, mezzo Beth Taylor, tenor John Findon and bass Ashley Riches. The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and boasted an almost full-house attendance. There were also television cameras capturing the concert for later broadcast on BBC Four. The audio will remain available on BBC Sounds for 30 days. Tel Aviv-born assistant concertmaster of The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Hed Yaron Meyerson, was the latest to guest as leader for this gala concert. The programme was introduced, for both the auditorium and the broadcast with his customary whimsy, by Tom Service.
Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s piece was a ‘bacchanal’, not so much in the classical sense of an orgy of unrestrained drunken revelry and licentiousness, a cult celebration of the gifts of Bacchus (Dionysus), god of wine; but in the Caribbean sense of a carnival, a colourful celebration of life, plenty and diversity, food and drink, music and dancing. Latin American rhythms pulsed as a carnival procession moved. I could almost see the parade and taste the tropical fruits and the rum. Brass and percussion drove the syncopated rhythms and the momentum, while strings and winds were the onlookers joyously caught up in the explosion of colour, rhythm and movement. Rapid dancing figures in the violins in octaves reminded me of another composer linking world music to the classical stage, Ravi Shankar in his Sitar Concerti. A thrilling, upbeat, life-affirming concert opener captured the hearts of the Glasgow audience. The composer was present (seated right behind me, in fact) and went to the stage to hug the conductor, thank the performers and acknowledge the applause.
The dramatic declamatory cascade that follows a timpani roll and opens the first movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto is based on a chain built from a four-note figure that seems to subsequently become a kind of signature for Grieg and keep cropping up throughout his oeuvre, and Stephen Hough made it tell. This allowed the almost tentative, wistful A-minor character of the first main theme to be beautiful pointed by Ryan and the orchestra and responded to in kind by Stephen. The cellos warmly sang the major-key second theme, setting the scene for some eloquent affectionate responses from the piano. Phrasing through the movement continued in like vein, open, expressive, unforced and mutually responsive, seeming to breathe naturally, but with no shortage of rich romanticism, recalling the Schumann in the same key. The idyllic mood of D-flat major nocturnal reverie in the slow movement was beautifully set up by the muted strings. The piano entry of a long unhurried ornamented descending phrase will forever be associated, for Irishmen of a certain age, with a 1970s TV advertisement in which it featured. A cloud of tiny cream-coloured particles rises slowly in a black background. As the field of view broadens, we realise we are viewing the head form on a recently pulled pint of stout. The caption, in hushed tones, announces “These 30 seconds of darkness were brought to you by Guinness”. Like I said, idyllic. The central section of the movement is more passionate and declarative before the idyll returns to close the movement. It was gorgeous. Attacca to the finale, the first theme a Norwegian folk dance in A-minor, suggestive of a trolls’ knees-up. It was played characterfully with a touch of humour. Matthew Higham’s flute sang the exquisite vision-like first appearance of the second theme that will become a powerful Big Tune at the end (proving that Tchaikovsky was not the first to do this, and therefore not the sole model for Rachmaninov). Back to the Trolls’ Ball first, though, so that when the Big Tune does return, with the bluesy bittersweet minor seventh replacing the major, it knocks your socks off, just as it did when it won Grieg the admiration of no less a romantic giant than Franz Liszt. Stephen and Ryan made sure we could see why. Superb. It was only when Stephen sat down for an encore and said that he was changing his planned piece to avoid a broken string that I realised there was one. Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major, Op.9 No.2 received a dreamy outing for a grateful audience. My guess is a broken E, Chopin not being big on minor seconds.
The underlying plot of Tippett’s oratorio is derived from actual historic events, which were recent when the composition of the work was begun on the first day of the Second World War A stateless German-Polish Jewish refugee teenager living in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, driven to despair at the tightening of anti-Jewish legislation in Germany and the worsening climate of anti-Semitism across Europe, walked into the German Embassy in Paris on the 7h November 1938 and shot an official, who died later from his injuries, Two days later, a state sanctioned anti-Jewish nocturnal riot was unleashed on Jewish-owned businesses across Germany, known as ‘Kristallnacht’, a reference to the glitter of broken glass that littered the streets of every German city the following dawn. The bleak first part depicts the wretchedness of the persecuted, the displaced and the disenfranchised, the despair of the ‘Child of Our Time’. The second part deals with his act of violent desperation, the horrific reprisals and their aftermath, the boy languishing in jail. The third part is an attempt to make sense of it all, a pacifist’s plea for understanding, compassion, forgiveness, justice and emancipation and, perhaps, a glimmer of hope. Tippett endows the story with universality by including African-American spirituals at pivotal points of the score, making it a plea for the emancipation of all oppressed people (from “pogroms in the east; lynchings in the west”, for instance). In ‘our’ time, when there is genocide, there is an emboldened far-right in the ascendant, there are boorish, narcissistic, racist populist clowns in positions of virtually unlimited power, ‘A Child of Our Time’ is no less relevant than it was when eventually first performed in 1944.
As well as delivering the spirituals, whose moods range through stoicism, alienation, defiance, hope and the serenity of acceptance, the chorus provides context for the narrative and gives voice to the many, including the oppressed, their overt oppressors and those unwittingly complicit in the oppression. The NYCoS choir, on this occasion numbering just over 90 choristers, were thoroughly excellent, blending perfectly with soloists and orchestra as required and contributing fully to the emotional impact of the work as the composer must have envisaged. The spirituals were consolatory; the fugal chorus of the brutal ‘Kristallnacht’ Terror was as chilling as I have heard.
The soprano is the child’s mother in the narrative, shamed by their wretchedness, fearful of his desperation. South African soprano Pumeza Matshikiza made her as real as if she were an operatic character – a very moving performance. In the unbearable spirit-crushing “hostile environment”, her health fails and she writes to her son, who struggles to come to her aid, setting in motion the tragic train of events. It is to the soprano at the end that Tippett gives the words: “Here is no final grieving but an abiding hope”. The soprano then soars over the ensemble texture, finally liberated from suffering. It was very beautiful, as was her contribution to the spiritual, ‘By and By’.
The mezzo-soprano carries a rhetorical role, the voice of wisdom, insight and counsel, explaining what the characters and crowds caught up in the tragedy cannot see. As the child’s aunt, she tries to calm his defiant rebellious spirit, to no avail. I have the BBC to thank for my first hearing of the oratorio in the mid-1970s on BBC2, possibly a televised Prom. I am fairly certain that the mezzo in that performance was Janet Baker, not long before she became a Dame. Tippett gives her the words: “The moving waters renew the earth. It is spring.” On the word “spring”, the harmony resolves, a moment that on first hearing, and indeed almost always ever since, has moved me to tears. Glaswegian mezzo Beth Taylor delivered compellingly with phenomenal warmth and depth and yes, I wept. Even now, as I type, there is a lump in my throat. Fabulous.
The tenor is the child himself. He has fled his homeland with other refugees and is barely living in hiding and poverty in a ‘great city’, his horizons curtailed by another “hostile environment”. His attempts to come to his mother’s aid frustrated, his anger boils over and ‘he shoots the official’. Though not an operatic role, the operatic trope of falling phrases is employed by Tippett to convey the crushing of the human spirit and British tenor John Findon endowed these with the perfect mix of plaint, pathos and anguish. Examples of the composer’s signature string writing with freely skipping syncopated counterpoint make this even more poignant with contrast, perhaps suggesting the boy’s aspirations, ultimately unattainable.
The bass is the narrator, tasked with telling the story in a matter-of-fact manner, sometimes in a sort of quasi-recitative. Clarity of diction is de rigueur, and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist (not to mention a former chorister of King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied English) Ashley Riches delivered that to perfection. Not to suggest impassivity – his rich expressive baritone concealed none of the drama and was important in the spirituals and the cathartic melisma before the final spiritual, ‘Deep River’.
This was a revelatory and unforgettable performance of Tippett’s masterpiece, which fortified its association in my mind (and that of Tippet’s music in general) with the BBC. In the 70s and 80s, BBC2 featured documentaries on the composer, his relationship and the association of his quartet music with the Lindsay String Quartet, as well as landmark productions of ‘A Midsummer Marriage’ and ‘The Knot Garden’. So, I’ll be raising a grateful glass not only to 90 years of the BBC SSO, but also the BBC’s contribution to my personal growth.