2011 review: Kenneth Walton, Classical music

Published on Thursday 29 December 2011 00:00

Strauss provided the high point of 2001, at an International Festival that again didn’t quite convince, and we lost a giant among film composers

WHAT MADE ME TINGLE?

The music of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten, with all its cinematic glitter, is thrill enough. But besides having the Mariinsky Opera Orchestra and Valery Gergiev in the pit, the entire legendary Russian company was at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival with a full-blooded stage production of the opera by Jonathan Kent. It may have had its visual confusions, and the huge Mariinsky voices added a rather un-German dimension. But the all-round self-belief of this performance was, for me, the most spine tingling highlight of 2011.

WHAT MADE ME GROAN?

Scottish Opera opened its current season with a small-scale Orpheus in the Underworld that seemed like a pre-emptive strike on the pantomime season. Rory Bremner’s risqué translation was coarse and bawdy, the production and cast matching it with the spirit of unbridled debauchery it deserved. Fair enough in itself, but viewed in the context of Scotland’s paucity of sustained opera provision, this mainly piano-accompanied piece of frippery seemed like a sardonic allegory on a national opera company living hand-to-mouth.

WHAT MADE US LAUGH?

The Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s visit to the Edinburgh Festival may have been musically drab, but an unintentional comedy moment raised the best belly laugh of the year. The entire front row of the Usher Hall audience was thoroughly soaked as solo percussionist Wang Beibei literally splashed her way through Tan Dun’s aptly-named Water Concerto with increasing vigour. In the second half, conductor Kent Nagano joined a front row conspiracy of raised umbrellas. Nice touch.

WHO DID WE SAY HELLO TO?

The year began with much guesswork as to likely successors to Royal Scottish National Orchestra chief executive Simon Woods and musical director Stéphane Denève. The answers came soon enough with the news that Canadian-based conductor Peter Oundjian was to be the new man with the RSNO baton, and Michael Elliott, former saviour of the beleaguered Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, was to be the new chief executive. Oundjian made an impressive guest appearance in March, conducting Brahms, but won’t take up office until Denève in May. Elliott is already in place and proving a reliable pair of hands.

WHO DID WE SAY GOODBYE TO?

On a more global note, the world said farewell in January to film composer John Barry, and more recently to filmmaker Ken Russell. Barry’s iconic scores included 12 James Bond movies and the soundtracks to Out of Africa and Midnight Cowboy, some of which were captured on a fine RSNO Barry celebration album several years ago. Russell impacted on the classical music world, not so much for his novel Brahms gets Laid, as for his charismatically surreal films on the lives of composers – Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Delius and Liszt memorably among them – and a version of The Boyfriend for which Sir Peter Maxwell Davies rewrote the score.

A MOMENT OF BITTER NOSTALGIA?

Surely this was the recent sale of EMI – the last of the big British-owned record labels – to the French-based conglomerate Vivendi, a company that started life as a sewage company. EMI’s recording division goes to Universal Music, giving the new owners just short of 50 per cent of the recorded music market. Will it hang on to the iconic Abbey Road Studios in London? Will it end up going pop, despite having such classical giants on its books as Simon Rattle? Whatever, the days of the big classical British labels are gone.

WHAT CHANGED FOR THE BETTER?

Despite pockets of ongoing criticism for director Jonathan Mills’ Edinburgh Festival music programme, this year’s had significantly more sparkle to it, particularly the orchestral line-up. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra’s closing Ravel programme wasn’t the most exciting final clincher. But along the way, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s electrifying Symphony fantastique, the Philharmonia’s Rite of Spring, Donald Runnicles epic Mahler 2 with the BBC SSO, and such theatrically riveting concert opera performances of Haydn’s Orlando paladino by the Freiburg Chamber Orchestra, and Massenet’s Thais by the RSNO, were absolute corkers.

WHO WERE THE CASUALTIES?

Spare a thought for Scottish Opera Orchestra, whose full-time members were cast aside earlier this year and, like the full-time chorus before them, forced into part-time existence. It’s just another part of the dismantling process that has seen Scottish Opera fall gradually from its former position as a national treasure. As for Scotland’s young orchestral hopefuls, all eyes are now on the future of the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland (NYOS), which lost 50 per cent of its funding this year and is currently without a chief executive following the departure of chief executive Julian Clayton. More forward thoughts on this in next week’s 2012 preview. Meanwhile however, the unprecedented non-existence of a NYOS New Year concert is not only deplorable, but a sure sign that all is not well with the organisation.

WHICH CD RELEASE IMPRESSED THE MOST?

A close contender might have been Steven Osborne’s monumental release of Ravel’s complete piano works recorded for Hyperion. But the CD that really had something new to say was the recreation by Francois-Xavier Roth’s period instrument orchestra Les Siècles on the Musicales Actes Sud label of the 1910 Ballets Russes programme that included the premiere of Stravinsky’s Firebird. To hear Stravinsky’s visceral music played with such electrifying timbres and steely brilliance is to understand more about the shock impact that it had at the time.

WHOSE YEAR WAS IT?

This has to be Paul Mealor, composer and music lecturer at Aberdeen University, who not only had his anthem Ubi caritas performed at the Royal Wedding in April, but then went on to enjoy classical chart-topping success with The Tender Light, Decca’s album featuring his music, before hitting the number one spot in the Christmas pop charts as composer of the Military Wives’ song Wherever you are. Now that’s what I call crossover!

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