Capella Edina: Enigma

Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 12/10/25

Capella Edina; Luis Schmidt (conductor), Arthur Bruce (baritone).

https://capella-edina.com/enigma-2025/     https://capella-edina.com/

 Describing itself as “the City of Edinburgh’s first resident professional philharmonic orchestra since 1937”, Capella Edina is a 62-strong ensemble formed in 2024 by its now 21-year-old German conductor and Director of Music, Luis Schmidt.  Its motto is “United by Passion for Music”.  An imaginatively constructed programme, titled ‘Enigma’, themed around riddles and those who unravel them, and described as “the final concert of the orchestra’s first season”, was presented in the capital’s Usher Hall on the afternoon of 12th October.  As receiving the invitation to review the concert on the last day of September was the first I heard of the orchestra, I arrived as a tabula rasa, ready to look and listen. 

And it is concerning the ‘look’ that I must preface any consideration of the music, if only to dispose of observations that cannot go unremarked.  For quite a few years now and as part of a trend of “democratisation” of access to symphonic music, some conductors have been driving a divergence from traditional podium attire.  Luis Schmidt wore an outfit that might be described as quasi-military bandmaster uniform, with wide gold piping on the black trousers and the épaules of a long black coat, cinched with a wide dark green band (which, as it was worn outside the coat, I would hesitate to describe as a cummerbund).   I wouldn’t wish to suggest that he looked anything other than very smart indeed, though there was a remarkable contrast with his style of conducting.  My regular readers will have seen me comment frequently on how the experience of live orchestral music-making is often enhanced by the expressive quasi-balletic movements of certain conductors, such as, for example, Joana Carneiro, Gemma New, Steven Mercurio and Maxim Emelyanychev.  Their movements convey a wealth of interpretative information about mood and expression, not only to the players, but to the listeners who are also spectators.  We listen for what we can see and appreciate it all the more. Luis Schmidt’s lower body remained anchored to the podium.  His arms flawlessly communicated information about tempo, pulse and dynamics with precision and clarity.  But, from my seat in the centre stalls (and therefore from behind), I detected not one scintilla of communication of musical expression.  It was even more remarkable, therefore, and a testament to the quality of work that must have been done in the two days of rehearsals, that the playing was of the high quality, both technically and expressively, that it indisputably was.  Nonetheless, I felt starved of a uniquely human element, the sense of being reached out to and drawn into a shared experience.  Given the motto and mission of Capella Edina to do just that, I found the starkness of the divorce of vision from ethos unsettling, and invisibility of the “passion” mentioned in the motto disconcerting. That said, I am now free to concentrate on my experience as a listener.

Newcastle-based composer, guitarist, music theorist and philosopher James Clay is Capella Edina’s Composer in Residence and his short fanfare-like piece for organ and orchestra, ‘Afterland’, a commission by the orchestra commemorating mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, opened the concert. The Usher Hall organ, played by Anthony White, opened.  The prominence of timpani and string counterpoint and polyphony was reminiscent of the sound world of the more ebullient parts of Poulenc’s Organ Concerto.  A super piece and a great concert opener.  I am always glad of an opportunity to hear that organ.  I am sure that Luis told us that the composer was present, and we were invited to applaud again, but bizarrely he did not come to the stage to acknowledge the applause.  Perhaps I misheard?

The first of two suites of film music, 5 short cues from Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score for ‘The Theory of Everything’, a biopic of mathematical physicist Stephen Hawking, was up next.  Often melodically minimalist, the music was perhaps richer in the variety of its layered textures and timbres, with imaginative use of the piano, harp, celesta and marimba (or possibly vibraphone), and a vital pulse. There was a waltz-like tune, and a wistful idyll with the celesta emulating a music box. The final cue, which did not so much conclude as stop, had a multi-layered driven pulse with a slower upper chordal texture, evocative of fast-moving deep water, and perhaps a metaphor for an alert and lively intelligence trapped behind a synthesised voice and the physical limitations of motor neurone disease.  With a total playing time of 11 minutes, the 5 cues were each almost painfully brief.  Comparison with the towering masterpieces that are Prokofiev’s suites from his film scores would be unfair, so I’d better not go there.  I was delighted to read from the programme that the celesta was played by the very talented pianist Ailsa Aitkenhead, whom my choir Clackmannanshire Choral Society was honoured to welcome as our guest soloist in our Spring Concert in 2024.

Marking 50 years since the composer’s death, a quirky 1963 piece of Arthur Bliss followed, his ‘Knot of Riddles’, a song cycle of 7 Anglo-Saxon “who am I?” riddles selected from archives in Exeter Cathedral, in translation by Kevin Crossley-Holland, for baritone and chamber orchestra.  Scottish baritone Arthur Bruce was the soloist.   Each clue in blank verse is sung, followed by the answer, with artfully-scored music that paints a picture that is always a further clue.  All of the answers are creatures or features of nature.  Bliss’ prowess as an orchestrator was allowed to shine, with some particularly fine writing for (and playing from) the horns, especially  in the 3rd riddle (Oyster).  This was a first hearing for me and the piece received the utmost advocacy from Arthur Bruce’s warm, engaging, colourful baritone and sensitive playing from Capella Edina.  Thoroughly excellent.  However, I have a gripe (and regular readers have probably already guessed where this is going).  The lyrics of the clues, without the answers, were printed in the programme and the audience was invited to ponder them and see if they could guess the solutions before they were revealed.  But, with the lights in the auditorium dimmed, few, if any, could read their programmes in the Stygian gloom.  Why, oh why, must this crass barrier to engagement be perpetuated, even by performers purporting to pursue the opposite?

After the interval, the second suite of film music brought us back to commemorating  Alan Turing, whose work led to deciphering the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, with a 5-minute taster from Alexandre Desplat’s score for ‘The Imitation Game’.  Minimalism was again in evidence, but with motor rhythms delivering the pulse and a slower less driven section.  I found myself recalling bits of the film, which I regard as a good sign for film music.  Short and sweet, but again stopping rather than finishing.

Luis Schmidt introduced the culmination of the programme, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, which he described as his “favourite piece of music, especially when performed by these wonderful musicians”, and spoke of the mysterious nature of what may constitute the eponymous ‘Enigma’, much less any idea of what the solution may be.  Elgar himself hinted that the (entirely original) theme was a countermelody to another theme that is not played but left it at that.  However, the fact that each variation is a musical portrait of either the composer, his wife or one of their friends makes the piece a celebration of love and friendship, and that alone is enough to make it special.  No argument from me.  Affection, sometimes whimsical and often deeper, is to be found in each portrait and shone in the interpretation (despite the conductor’s prime candidacy for “World’s Least Demonstrative Conductor”).  Variation VII “Troyte” was superbly thrilling.  All were characterful.  The most technically challenging, Variation XI, depicting not a human but his over-excitable bulldog tumbling into the River Wye then swimming to where he can emerge barking triumphantly, was the only one that was slightly imperfect as regards ensemble cohesion, but it is literally a beast.  The final variation, Elgar himself, was all the more glorious for the return of the Usher Hall organ.  As good as I’ve heard.

We stayed with Elgar for a charming, elegant encore: a chamber orchestral arrangement of his ‘Chanson de Nuit’.  Very lovely.

In conclusion, and notwithstanding a number of puzzled reservations, I am happy to acknowledge Capella Edina as a cohesive and capable ensemble of fine professional music-makers and a worthwhile new addition to Scotland’s and, in particular, the capital’s orchestral landscape.