Keith Bruce
Although the departure of Mick Elliot ostensibly left the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with a chief executive to find, the organisation seems in relaxed capable hands under a double act of finance director Kenneth Osborne, acting up, and executive producer Manus Carey looking after the programming side of things. Which is just as well, because the orchestra is in the midst of a busy time.
Over the summer it will move in to its new premises, now clearly taking shape between the John Lewis department store and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on the city's Killermont Street. It will do so in time to start celebrating its 125th birthday, an anniversary it shares with Prokofiev and Cole Porter, so both composers have been invited to the party, with musical theatre star Kim Criswell singign at Porter's 125 Gala next May.
So too have a whole slew of former conductors, to join the current team of Music Director Peter Oundjian and Principal Guest Thomas Sondergard. Over the two seasons that straddle the 2016 birthdate, Walter Weller, Neeme Jarvi, Alexander Lazarev and Stephane Deneve will all be putting in appearances on the podium.
Guests of honour, though, will be the RSNO Chorus, because it is to the choir's antecedent, Glasgow Choral Union, that the Scottish Orchestra, as the RSNO began, owes its existence, being founded in 1891, following its creation (for the Scottish premiere of Handel's Messiah) to accompany the singers. The first half of the 20th century saw the musicians joined by Gustav Holst, on trombone, Richard Strauss on the podium, and Arthur Rubenstein as piano soloist, with John Barbarolli and George Szell among its Principal Conductors before Alexander Gibson began his ground-breaking 25 year tenure than transformed music-making in Scotland.
The Chorus, then, has showcases throughout the coming season, opening it with Mahler 2 in October, and closing it with Beethoven 9 in May, both under Oundjian, who also "Conducts the Sea" in a Chorus-featuring programme in February that includes the Sea Symphony of Vaughan Williams and Debussy's La Mer.
Carey has been keen to reward those who attend concerts each week in the season with more of a narrative, and has worked with Oundjian and Sondergard to create a "closer sense of integration" both with the work of the conductors and the guest soloists. Nikolai Lugansky will be performing all five of Prokofiev's Piano Concertos over the next two seasons and Boris Biltburg plays Rachmaninov's Second and Third Concertos as well as joining some of the RSNO musicians in a chamber music recital on Valentine's Day next year. Before that, composer Brett Dean brings his viola to a chamber music concert in October, the day after he plays his own Viola Concerto with the orchestra.
Both those chamber concerts will take place in the adaptable, state-of-the-art 600-seater auditorium that is at the heart of the orchestra's new premises. One of the first public events there will be the start of a new "Under the Skin" series of events exploring the music of specific composers and presented by broadcaster Sandy Burnett, with Tchaikovsky the first in the spotlight. The new hall can be configured in both rehearsal and performance mode, hydraulic walls reducing the width of the space from 20 metres to 16 metres to improve the acoustics for concerts. A facility also equipped with a digital infrastructure enabling recording and streaming with the latest technology, both Osborne and Carey stress that the full possibilities of the new home will only become apparent once the musicians are in residence.
"There are a few things that use the new building in the new season, but there are more exciting plans and it will make a huge difference. It will become the engine room of the RSNO, allowing us to get closer to the audience," says Carey. "We will create opportunities for people to come in to the new space and explain composers and their sound and interpretation - and put music in its cultural setting."
Carey's appetite for narrative and links reaches its apotheosis next spring when a Sondergard concert that includes Szymanowsi's Symphony No4 is followed the next week by Nicola Benedetti playing the same composer's Violin Concerto No2 in an Oundjian concert that also includes the Scottish premiere of James MacMillan's Little Mass with the RSNO Junior Chorus. The next concert has the Scottish premiere of MacMillan's The Death of Oscar with Deneve conducting, alongside Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, played by Steven Osborne, while the week after Nikolai Lugansky sees play Prokofiev's Concert for the Left Hand in an all-Russian programme conducted by Lazarev.
The orchestra management is honest enough to admit that some of that sequence is a fortunate coincidence, but it is indicative of the way the organisation is moving. It is work that will also be seen more widely across Scotland during the season, with Stirling's Albert Halls, Forfar's Reid Hall, Ayr Town Hall, and the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh all additions to the orchestra's recent itinerary.
rsno.org.uk
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