Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Myths and Legends
The Queen’s Hall - 09/12/21
Tonight’s concert has almost fifty performers, and, unlike last week when they played in smaller groups, they’re all on stage at the same time. The instruments take up a larger area than usual with the celeste and piano only just squeezed in next to the stage door left, while the glockenspiel and xylophone jostle for position on the right of the stage.
There’s quite a buzz about the complicated programme. The five movements of Ravel’s ‘Mother-Goose Suite’ are to be played alongside fifteen songs from Mahler’s ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ in a continuous performance. The Queen’s Hall kindly supplies printed librettos and notes.
Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro has had to call off. I assume that the programme was arranged by her, as Ana Quintans, the soprano soloist, is from Portugal and New Zealand baritone, Julien Van Mellaerts, was due to sing ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ in Lisbon during lockdown. I’m sorry to miss seeing Carneiro again, an up-and-coming conductor whose previous appearances in Edinburgh have been excellent. We have another relative newcomer, US conductor Jonathon Heyward, replacing her. If tonight’s programme had been personally devised by this impressive musician, he could not have led a better performance.
As Marcus Barcham Stevens, Principal Second Violin, explains in his introduction, Ravel and Mahler shared an interest in folk tales. Ravel’s works, originally written as piano pieces for children, use their sound world to evoke magic and fairy tales. Mahler’s songs are often darker, unpleasant myths or first-person descriptions of horrors, although some are comic, even joyous. At times there are clear links between the works, at others the juxtapositions are more jarring.
The first group of pieces demonstrates these abrupt changes. The first two movements of the Ravel, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Tom Thumb’, are lyrical programmatic pieces – we hear Tom Thumb wandering about the woods and the birdsong. Then we have the first Mahler song, ‘Heavenly Life’. There’s a brisk abrasiveness in the introduction, and the jaunty rhythm continues during the verses. It’s a curious song about the pleasures of the afterlife, with some comic pictures of the saints and angels – who apparently “bake the bread”. Ana Quintans sings it expressively but with a certain ambiguity, which reflects the lyrics and the often strident accompaniment, which only softens in the last verse. Despite all the pretty pictures, “Herod is always lurking”. There’s no doubting the message of the second song. ‘Reveille’, the first of two songs about drummers at war, is grim, and Julien Van Mellaerts brings out the bitter mood of the narrator in his performance. He has had a lot of experience in Lieder, and it shows. The accompanying marching music becomes more complex and dissonant as more instruments join in and the violinists hit the strings with their bows to add to the percussive effects.
The mood lightens with the Ravel’s ‘Empress over the Pagodas’, with its eastern style percussion, including celeste and glockenspiel. The harp and some pentatonic work from the horns add to the atmosphere. In the Straussian Waltz, ‘Little Rhine Legend’, Quintans adopts a flirtatious persona in a pastoral fairy tale about a farm-girl and her sweetheart. Her heroine in the ‘Song of the Prisoner in the Tower’ seems equally happy and naïve, but her lover, locked up apparently for life has to disillusion her. This is the first of several songs in which the soprano and baritone alternate verses. Despite his valiant assertion that “thoughts are free”, he feels he must convince her that he must forswear her love. There’s a sense of a timeless dilemma in these harsher Mahler songs.
‘When the Splendid Trumpets Sound’, and ‘Wasted Effort’ are two more songs about lovers, the first a poignant song about a lover lost at war, with distant trumpet and flute accompaniment, and the second another pastoral lyric of courtship. Heyward who mouths along to the songs as he conducts, gives the music plenty of space in these more lyrical sections. This group of songs ends with a nasty ballad, Life on Earth, about a child starved by his mother. Against the upbeat orchestration, Van Mellaerts brings out all the savagery of the words.
The best of the Ravel pieces begins the fourth section, with the contrabassoon (Alison Green, who gets a special cheer in the final applause) imitating the Beast’s grumbling while Beauty waltzes on the clarinet. The Beast’s transformation into a handsome prince is celebrated with a harp solo. Two comic songs follow. ‘St Antony’s Sermon to the Fishes’ has a rather monotonous repeated melody with the interest being in the satirical words which give the fish distinctly human vices. Then there’s a rustic dance with a post-modern title, ‘Who Made up this Little Song?’
The last section contains different interpretations of the afterlife. Ravel’s ‘Fairy Garden’ concentrates on the magic of a fairy paradise – though David Kettle points out the underlying musical references to Ravel’s mother in the score. The mood moves abruptly to the cruel death of ‘The Drummer-Boy’, sung with convincing desperation by Van Mellaerts. A side-drum plays throughout, in a slow march with low winds and cellos. Before the last verse, the tone changes from bitterness to resignation and there’s an extended passage on bassoons and violas. There’s another emotional switch in his next song ‘Three Angels were Singing’. Although it too has a redemptive theme, the Christmas-carol-like tune and cheery accompaniment, puts it in a different world from the desperate drummer-boy.
‘Urlicht’ is the famous fourth movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, the Resurrection. Ana Quintan stands up as Van Mellaert finishes and with only a single high note introduction, sings “O Röschen rot”. The melody is heart-rending music on any occasion, and with a lovely orchestration featuring piano it’s a perfect end to this programme.
Before the concert, probably few in the audience were familiar with the work of the conductor, Jonathon Heyward, or the soloists, Ana Quintan and Julien Van Mellaerts, but they and the SCO on top form have given us a memorable performance.
