Review of the decade: Classical music - Years of change

Published on Tuesday 15 December 2009 18:11

In the third part of our review of the cultural decade, our critic look at the field of classical music. The area has enjoyed a period of growth, but with public purse strings starting to tighten, can the good times continue?

• Youth has been the emerging watchword for Scottish orchestras, with Ilan Volkov, above, Stphane Denve, and Robin Ticciati, below, taking up the baton here

TEN years ago, what did Scotland have in the way of national classical music flag-carriers that is different from today? Very little, it would seem, if viewed simply in the nominal sense.

The national picture revolves today, as it did then, around the brand mix of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO), the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) and Scottish Opera. Their combined seasonal matrix makes up the basic diet of large-scale music-making within Scotland's main cities and other lucky outposts.

But look more closely, and the truth is that every one of these national organisations has been touched, to greater or lesser degrees, by circumstances that have significantly altered the substance and standards of large-scale music programming in Scotland.

The creation of a Scottish Government – in its infancy back in 2000 – opened up an opportunity for the arts to talk directly to decision-making politicians, rather than to Westminster-based culture ministers through the bureaucratic medium of the Scottish Arts Council.

In particular, Holyrood's decision to fund the national companies directly, taking effect in 2007, was surely one of the most liberating and stabilising transformations to hit the Scottish arts community in a long time. It was to be critical in creating a more solid foundation for funding the national bodies, by separating their justifiable need for big bucks from the equally deserving minnows of the arts cash lottery.

But the fact that the move was precipitated by the one big classical musical scandal of the decade – the near collapse of Scottish Opera – should not be forgotten.

Remember how things stood in 2000 for our most cash-hungry company? On the face of it, Scottish Opera was riding on an artistic high, set to embark on one of opera's most ambitious and colossally expensive undertakings – a brand new production by Tim Albery of Wagner's Ring cycle, which would unfold over four years at successive Edinburgh Festivals, culminating in a triumphant staging of the entire cycle at the 2003 Festival.

Like any operatic scenario worth its salt, however, lurking beneath the surface was an undercurrent of impending doom. While throwing megabucks at the Ring, Scottish Opera was simultaneously careering towards financial ruin, with a debt of around 7 million and the bank threatening to call it in. Publicly, Scottish Opera got a severe drubbing, not least from politicians whose last wish was to be seen bailing out a bunch of warbling luvvies who half the public – as witnessed in the letters' pages of the press – felt were an elitist and expensive anachronism.

With the company essentially begging on its knees, and the government holding the silk purse, a deal was struck that left Scottish Opera with little option but to accept. It was to shut its doors for a year and produce no opera; and it was to get its house in order and come up with a frugal, iron-clad strategy that would allow it to live within its means.

Moreover, the full-time chorus was to be axed. In return, a multi-million-pound bail-out would remove most of the debt.

Fast forward, and Scottish Opera now operates without the ownership of Glasgow's Theatre Royal hanging round its neck. It appears, under its new managing director Alex Reedijk, to be thriftier and solvent. But with that has come swingeing cuts in the number of main-scale productions it mounts – there were only four this year, which is about half the number of a typical national, in some cases (like Opera North) provincial, company.

So can we say that Scottish Opera has changed for the better? It depends on what we mean by a national opera company. Against the paucity of big opera productions, Scottish Opera has certainly turned its attention towards fresher means of exposure, through small-scale, piano-accompanied touring, education projects and such imaginative projects as Five:15, which, through its 15-minute commissions, has given composers and writers new opportunities to write mini operas.

But there's a critical balance to be struck, and at this juncture the endpoint to Scottish Opera's metamorphosis is impossible to predict. Will it, for instance, be forced by lack of money to dilute further its performance agenda in favour of simply facilitating opera performance? I posed that question a few weeks ago in relation to the embryonic collaboration between Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales at the Traverse Theatre.

A further ten years down the line, it would be criminal to see Scotland's national opera company simply acting as a booking agent for touring productions from elsewhere. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

At least the orchestras appear to be coming out of the Noughties with a firm sense of direction, and artistically they are on top of their game. Ten years ago, such aspirations ranged from the highly likely to the ever-hopeful. And while the government's direct funding formula has been welcomed all round by the RSNO and SCO (the BBC SSO remains funded by the TV licence payers), change has occurred for other notable reasons.

Who would have thought that the RSNO, which sounded tired and indifferent at the start of the decade, could have turned itself into the hotter outfit it now is, once again touring overseas? It took two things to make that happen: the appointment as chief executive of Simon Woods, who has injected a sense of purpose into the entire organisation; and the appointment as musical director of Stphane Denve, whose rapport with audiences has been a warming influence.

But are the rumours true that Denve does not intend to stay beyond the expiry of his contract next season? It doesn't necessarily matter. The wild-haired Frenchman has already made a lasting contribution.

Conductors have been key in shaping the nature of change in our orchestras, and youth has been the emerging watchword. Ilan Volkov was in his twenties when he became principal conductor of the BBC SSO in 2003; so was Denve at the RSNO. And now the SCO has followed suit with the appointment of 26-year-old Robin Ticciati, who follows up last week's impressive season debut this weekend with another of his adventurous programming ideas, including Berlioz's La mort de Cloptre. Scottish orchestras have become a prime breeding ground for young and exciting talent.

For the BBC SSO, though, physical circumstances had a major bearing on its decade-long transformation from anonymous West End studio band to high-profile city-centre player based in Glasgow's City Halls, with Volkov now in the principal guest position, making way for the return to his native Scotland of globetrotting maestro Donald Runnicles. But if a decade of change among the national performers has generally been for the better, within other enclaves questions are still to be asked. Ten years ago, the Usher Hall reopened amid a fanfare of optimism with a showcase appearance by tenor Jos Carreras. A few years on and it was shut again, and then again. Where Glasgow and Perth have had a decade of stunning concert hall development, Edinburgh, like its tram system, is moving at a snail's pace.

And the Edinburgh Festival? Has new director Jonathan Mills brought valued change in the wake of Brian McMaster's heroic reign? That's another question we can't really answer till a new decade dawns.

REVIEW OF THE DECADE

Duncan Macmillan on Art: Silly money chasing silly art

Fiona Shepherd on Pop and Rock: The accent is on pop's brogue traders

Kenneth Walton on Classical: Years of change

Jim Gilchrist on Jazz and Folk: Young talent keeps the torch burning

Joyce McMillan on Theatre: Black Watch leads triumphant march forward

Alistair Harkness on Film: Technical hitch