Baroque Threads, Contemporary Colours

Queen’s Hall 23/4/26

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Lawrence Power director/viola

Violist Lawrence Power is a popular performer, as tonight’s very good attendance shows and he proves a persuasive advocate for the music he plays. There are baroque influences on the three main works in the programme, but only two short, sweet pieces of baroque music.

No-one quite knows what the “mysterious barricades” are in Couperin’s 1717 ‘Les Barricades mystérieuses’ – they may even be  the bar lines in the musical score, but it has fascinated composers since, and Thomas Adès’ 1994 chamber arrangement for double bass, bass clarinet, clarinet, viola and cello provides a few minutes of lovely harmonies. Vaughan Williams’ 1934 ‘Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra’ was written for Lionel Tetris,  a major figure in the early 20th century development of the viola as a solo instrument, as Lawrence Power has been in recent years. Vaughan Williams, a viola player himself, provides an excellent showcase for the qualities of the instrument in the warmth of the ‘Carol’ and the exuberance of the syncopated Christmas Dance –with the accompanying triangle suggesting bells. These timeless pieces contrast with the more reflective ‘Ballad’, an opportunity for the soloist to soar up to the instrument’s highest point. Finally the  more spiky ‘Moto perpetuo’ requires quickfire virtuosity. It’s attractive music and a rare chance to hear it.

While the stage is set for the larger orchestra, Lawrence Power talks to SCO violist Steve KIng about Michael Tippett. Steve confesses to being a teenage Tippett fan, listening to the ‘Fantasia Concertante (which we’re to hear tonight) and ‘The Midsummer Marriage’ on vinyl while his friends were into Pink Floyd. He played on the SCO recording of the Fantasia in 1987 with Tippett conducting – “after a fashion”, he points out. The orchestra rehearsed with another conductor and Tippett, whose sight was failing and who used a braille score made several mistakes – but Steve King says, - he greeted these with roars of laughter. He asks us to listen out for the section where Bach’s ‘Fugue on a theme of Corelli’ becomes part of the ‘Fantasia’ and the orchestra violas have the chance to shine.

Michael Tippett was commissioned by the 1953 Edinburgh Festival to write a work to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Corelli’s birth. He chose two excerpts from the Concerto Grosso in F, firstly from a slow unresolved section, which to him represented darkness and a duet between violins which represented light. The work was written for string orchestra with a concertante group of two violins and a cello. Lawrence Power takes one of the violin parts, Stephanie Gonley the other, and Philip Higham is on cello. As often happens in baroque music, the concertante group play almost continuously, through the 20 minute work. It combines great virtuosity with deep emotions, which encompass uncertainty and sometimes terror as well as the joy which conquers in the end. The passages where a melody in the orchestral lower strings plays beneath the rapid movement in the viola and violin’s upper register are breathtaking, and are what many of us will take away from the performance.

Peter Hall’s 1974 film of Ronald Blyth’s ‘Akenfield’ used parts of Tippett’s ‘Fantasia’ as its background music, and helped to popularise recordings. Tippett’s slower music helped depict the Suffolk landscapes, while the brutality of farm labouring and of the Great War are brilliantly paired with the furious discordant music representing darkness.

After the interval we hear ‘Les Sauvages’, a representation of the Native American dances which Rameau saw when six Native American leaders visited Paris in 1725 to pledge allegiance to King Louis XV. The large orchestra containing brass and winds, are led off by Lawrence Power hitting a hand drum, while in the back row, creating suitably exotic sounds is a magnificent  brass percussion instrument, which receives its own applause.

Three years ago I heard Pekka Kuusisto play a Violin Concerto by Magnus Lindberg, which was preceded by a talk from the violinist. A spoken introduction to the Viola Concerto receiving its Scottish première would have been welcome tonight. The composer has chosen a ‘Mozart-sized orchestra’ with woodwinds, horns and trumpets but no percussion. The work is in three movements, marked 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the programme, played without a break. Power’s recording of the work indicate more precise markings which I’ll refer to later. The 9 minute first movement begins with a brass and woodwind fanfare, which the soloist and strings reply to. The soloist’s line is in the instrument’s upper register, rapid notes, mostly dotted or in triplets, while the strings play more slowly beneath. The call and response pattern is repeated several times, with the viola sometimes playing with solo or duetting woodwinds as well as the strings. Towards the end of the movement the pattern changes and, in lieu of a cadenza, the viola plays more elaborate music, with chords and trills. The second movement explores more of the instrument’s lower register and then, according to the CD notes, “between the second and the third movements there is a short movement called Trio, a cadenza-like passage marked ‘Quasi una cadenza’, an Interlude and a main cadenza before the finale”.  The main cadenza,  which is improvised, includes a passage where Power sings and plays his viola like a mandolin – a nice touch. The fast third movement is a virtuosic as one might hope and the work’s optimistic conclusion is greeted with great applause, with some of the audience standing.

See also: SCO online essays on the history of the Viola Concerto

‘Akenfield’ directed by Peter Hall online (1 hour 40 minutes)

Magnus Lindberg Viola Concerto 1st Movement YouTube video with score