Beethoven’s Eroica
Usher Hall, 24/10/2025
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, David Niemann (Conductor), Paul Philbert (Timpani)
Isn’t it odd when you go to a concert featuring one of the greatest works of all time, plus a first half of pieces you’ve never heard of, thinking – “well, the first pieces look reasonably short. We’ll soon get to the Beethoven” – and by the interval, you are just hoping the famous work comes up to scratch, as the first half was so good?
Such was my experience on Friday 24th October at the Usher Hall, in the second concert of the season by the RSNO. We arrived to be greeted with the news that the scheduled conductor, Anthony Parnther, was unwell, and that David Niemann was taking over at short notice. I remembered Mr Niemann from February of this year, when he conducted the RSNO in a concert of Wagner and Tchaikovsky, a concert of searing excitement and thrilling individuality. We were treated here to a similarly stunning concert, all the more astonishing given the short notice Mr Niemann had, in particular learning two scores way off the usual repertoire list.
We started with Andrzej Panufnik’s Sinfonia Sacra from 1964. I have to confess that my heart sank to read the notes promising an individual modernist style. Most classical music from the 1950s and 60s was, personally, almost unlistenable to but, as soon as we began with four solo trumpets arranged sonically around the hall, my fears were dispelled. The work was fabulous, and the performance by the RSNO and David Niemann was stunning. Most of the material in the Sinfonia was based on a Polish mediaeval plainchant, the Bogurodzica (Mother of God), which became in the Middle Ages a sort of patriotic anthem beloved of all Poles. It was both a sacred chant and also a war hymn, a battle cry sung by warriors before a martial engagement. As such, it was very special to Polish people, and Panufnik, an exile in the west from the Polish communist state, used it, albeit in a modern way, to make a statement about his native land. It was commissioned to be premiered in Monte Carlo in 1964 but was not heard in Poland until 1978, when Sir Alexander Gibson and the SNO played it at the Warsaw Autumn Festival, to the apparent dismay of the Polish government. In the early 1980s, I myself sang twice in Warsaw, once with the Scottish Theatre Company in ‘The Three Estates’, a 16th century morality play by Sir David Lyndsay, and again with the Scottish Early Music Consort with a mediaeval programme. Barriers were beginning to come down, and I hope that the Scottish performances, beginning with the SNO, were of some assistance in the gradual opening up of that great country.
David Niemann and the RSNO gave a marvellous account of the Sinfonia Sacra on Friday, and we must hope that this excellent work is given more outings in concert halls throughout Europe. Only two trumpeters were credited in the programme, but all four in the hall, Roeland Henkens, Brian McGinley, Robert Baxter and Tom Thornton, were fantastic!
The second piece in the first half was the world premiere of Tamboo-Bamboo, a Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra, composed by Matthew Rooke and spectacularly played by Paul Philbert MBE, the orchestra’s principal timpanist.
An evocation of Caribbean exuberance within the confines of classical music, this piece was commissioned by the RSNO, and given its first performance on Friday, to great acclaim. Paul Philbert’s extrovert style of playing has endeared him to the RSNO audiences ever since he became Principal Timpanist, and he was a brilliant choice to front the new concerto. His fabulous playing at the start of the final movement of Mahler’s 7th Symphony, in the last concert in Edinburgh on 3rd October, stood out for me, and I was thrilled to see and hear him as the soloist in Tamboo-Bamboo. Entertainingly, the tamboo-bamboo is a percussion instrument played widely across the whole Caribbean region, but of course, here, it was played by the Percussion section. Mr Philbert was master of his timpani on the left side of the orchestra as we looked at it and brought his full range of expertise to the part – loud, soft, fast, slow and creating sounds with different brushes on both drum and surround. Of course, the idea of a concerto soloist, with stunning virtuosity and harmonic effects, is harder on the tuned drums, controlled with a pedal, but, clearly, rhythmic variety can make up for the lack of flashy note playing. Not being in any way knowledgeable about sets of timps, I will keep my observations to a minimum, but it was very clear that Mr Philbert was having a great time playing Mr Rooke’s piece. Speaking to the composer just before the concert, he was at pains to assure me that his concerto was a serial-free zone, and that tonality was king in his book. Deo gracias! Tamboo-Bamboo is an extended piece, lasting over 20 minutes, providing the orchestra with some terrific music, from the contemplative evocation of a Caribbean beach at sunset to a wild hedonistic soca party, in a rondo-like finale which takes the breath away.
David Niemann, who can only have seen the score very recently, was apparently in complete control of the orchestra as rhythmic variations swirled across the instruments, and the work was greeted with great roars of approval from an audience which was notably younger and more ebullient than usual. Mr Philbert was given a great ovation (as were the percussionists with their vast array of instruments and things to shake and bang, including, of course, Tamboo-Bamboo!). He is taking a sabbatical this year from the RSNO, to take up an appointment as Principal Timpani with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, incidentally an orchestra I myself have sung with on a couple of occasions, and we wish him well. As for Mr Rooke, it is clear that his new concerto is a hit, and I look forward to hearing it again soon.
So, as someone once said, “Follow That!”
The good news is that, after the interval, the RSNO and David Niemann delivered a stunning performance of Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, The Eroica. A few friends told me that they weren’t coming to this concert, because they had heard enough Eroicas to fill a lifetime, and they didn’t need to hear another. Wrong!
My notes about Mr Niemann’s last concert at the Usher Hall tell me that I was thrilled by his individual reading of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, and this was also the case here. One has no need to hear a quirky account of a familiar piece if it’s simply a matter of playing it very fast or slow, and, sadly, many contemporary readings of classic works fall into this category. It was certainly the case that Mr Niemann’s rendition of this famous symphony took off like a rocket. However, as the work progressed, it was evident that his tempi were the result of a lot of thought, and that his reading was going to bring fresh new insights into Beethoven’s glorious score.
He is that rare animal, the left-handed conductor, like Sir Donald Runnicles, and that alone differentiates him from the mainstream, so when he eschewed his baton (which he had used for the first half) for the Beethoven, we were aware immediately that something was different from the norm. I used to be a bit sceptical of conductors who dispensed with their baton, as it often meant that they were going to overdo the idiosyncrasy of their interpretation, but here it meant that Mr Niemann was able to mould the extraordinary inventiveness of Beethoven into a fascinating new reading which revealed insights and colours not previously heard.
In this, he was aided by the fantastic flexibility of the modern RSNO, whose virtuosic playing matched his interpretation. It wasn’t just that the first movement was very fast and the second quite slow - that’s a trick which is easy to do, but not very interesting. One was however aware that throughout the symphony, Mr Niemann was trying to find fresh ideas to bring out the genius of the composer.
Regular readers will know that I value the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven with the highest esteem possible, and I feel that this symphony, first heard in Vienna in April 1805, when he was beginning to understand the possible onset of deafness, is the first great manifestation of his genius to see the light of day. The story of the original dedication to Napoleon, the furious removal of that dedication, and the ensuing struggle with hearing problems and personal complications is well known, and needn’t detain us here, but the fact that Vienna was under occupation by the end of the year is worthy of note. We sometimes forget how volatile the political climate of the time was. The French Revolution was only 16 years before the Eroica, war was raging all over Europe with armies rampaging across the continent as France stumbled from the Terror to Napoleon’s ascendancy and declaration of Imperial status. The Battle of Trafalgar was lost in October 1805, but Vienna was occupied. Napoleon went on to attack Russia, and only 10 years after the Eroica premiere, he was defeated at Waterloo. How anyone could compose the greatest music of all time while all this was going on is an utter miracle, while his personal battle with deafness must have been truly shattering.
All this history is designed to offer some context to the fact that the 3rd Symphony didn’t come out of nowhere, and any attempt to look anew at this masterpiece is worthwhile. David Niemann’s interpretation, particularly given his short notice with the orchestra, was quite amazing, and the ovation at the end was richly merited and heart-warming.
