Bizet’s Carmen Suite
Usher Hall 10/8/25
NFM Leopoldinum, Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin, director)
As part of the ‘Focus on Poland’ feature of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, Wrocław-based National Forum for Music’s Leopoldinum 23-piece string orchestra’s residency began on the night of 10th August in the Usher Hall with a programme of music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Richard Strauss, Wojciech Kilar and Rodion Shchedrin. Scottish guest players, in the form of an additional bassist and 5 percussionists, joined the ensemble for the evening’s music-making. Attendance was very satisfactory.
Bacewicz’s music has been enjoying a revived popularity in the UK, mainly due to being extensively programmed by Radio 3 in recent years, and indeed her 1948 3-movement Concerto for String Orchestra had featured in the early morning programme a few days before the concert. The music respects the form and structure of a concert grosso, but the language is boldly individual as befits a pupil of Nadia Boulanger. The outer movements brim with energetic vitality and stride forward with rhythmic confidence (thrilling for music composed under a repressive Stalinist regime). There are numerous solos, some quite lyrical, but when the ripieni expand into radiant string polyphony with startlingly original harmonies, the effect is spine-tingling. The middle movement is nocturnal and atmospheric, but without the austerity of Bartók and anticipating the formal beauty of Andrzej Panufnik. The ensemble string sound was scrumptious and exploited the acoustic of the Usher Hall with evident approval. A great start.
Strauss’ ‘Metamorphosen’, composed in 1945 as the Second World War was coming to its bitter end, is a single-movement work for 23 string soloists (including 3 double basses, explaining the need for the Scottish guest bassist) and must be a prime candidate for “the saddest piece of music ever written”. A persistent fragmentary quotation from the third bar of the ‘Marcia funebre’ from Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony makes the intent clear: it is an elegy for Austro-German culture. Germany lay in ruins. The opera houses of Munich and Vienna, with which the composer was most closely associated, had been reduced to rubble. The destruction visited on the revered culture had been wrought by the evils of Nazism, which the revered culture had been powerless to prevent. Despite moments of transcendent Wagnerian beauty in the music, the Beethoven quotation reappears to announce that they are all tainted. Despair and guilt win. The Leopoldinum gave us a realisation of the piece that made all this mercilessly clear. Violins and violas played standing. There was a good 15-second silence at the end before the applause erupted.
Kilar’s 1986 ‘Orawa’ is a single-movement piece with the same forward drive and rhythmic vitality as the outer movements of the Bacewicz. It begins as if it is going to be a dreary obsessively minimalist piece, but the initially thin scoring fleshes out quickly and it becomes characterful and expansive, suggesting a train journey through magnificent scenery in the Carpathian or Tatra mountains, with elements of Slavonic Dances. A thrilling romp that ended in a whooping “Yay!” from all the players. Superb.
Shchedrin’s 1967 ‘Carmen Suite for Strings and Percussion’ is a substantial 13-scene one-act ballet score arranging Bizet’s gorgeous melodies, drawn almost entirely from the opera (one scene, called ‘Bolero’, is actually a part of the ‘Farandole’ from the ‘L'Arlésienne’ incidental music). The percussion includes tubular bells, marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, an array of untuned percussion, and timpani, all played by Scottish musicians guesting. It received a spirited and engaging outing. I’ll always prefer the original Bizet, but it was very enjoyable and well worth the candle, rounding off an evening of top quality music making.