The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, during our lockdown, have been streaming recordings of concerts each Friday evening on their YouTube channel. It has taken me until now to find this out and so have missed quite a few sadly. However, I am going to try and make sure I watch them from now on.
This last one, from last Friday was originally performed in the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow in May 2019, and was a concert of two shorter chamber orchestral works.
The first, a short 8 minute overture, written for a play based on Coriolanus, was the 'Coriolan Overture' by Ludwig Van Beethoven. This is unmistakably Beethoven, even if you've never heard the piece before, or like me, it has been a couple of decades since you did, you instantly recognise Beethoven's signature all over it. Written and first performed in 1807 it is still very much in the Classical style, and the RSNO kept it sounding fresh and alive this evening. It's a rather brash piece, but the orchestra gave it some lovely dynamics, and it was exccellently measured.
The second piece, the longer (29 minutes) Concerto for flute and harp by Mozart is a rather interesting piece, despite not being a huge Moart fan (yes, you can flail me and burn me alive in oil if you like, but it still won't make me truly like Mozart's music!) This double concerto, written in 1778 when the composer was 22 years' old is in the standard three movements (allegro / andantino / rondeau: allegro) is was kept alive and joyful this evening. This is one of only two double concertos written by Mozart, and is his only work for solo harp. At that time the harp was never really considered to be an orchestral instrument, and here Mozart treats the instrument as a key-less piano. It was therefore a very unusual combination and something of a complete oddity at the time, and even now, the combination is not a common one in orchestral terms. It's a brilliant virtuoso piece to showcase these two solo instruments however, and doing just that were two players from the orchestra. Katherine Bryan showed us that the flute was a hugely melodic and versatile instrument full of colour, whilst Pippa Tunnel made sure no-one would underestimate the capabilities of the harp ever again. Mozart's muisc is in general ebullient, optimistic, clever, and show-offy. No difference here then with this piece, but the orchestra made sure they did the piece full justice.
The orchestra's leader Sharon Ruffman performed no mean feat at all by leading the chamber orchestra unconducted in both pieces. That's not an easy task by any means but the ensemble worked beautifully together and I truly enjoyed their musicianship.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 11/6/20
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