WELL, folks, the long wait is nearly over.
It seems to me no time at all since late May, when the Scottish orchestras' autumn/winter seasons were drawing to a close, audiences looked ahead and I began to hear the perennial rhetorical question from a number of concert-goers: "What do we do for the next four months?"
To some that might seem a daft question, because the Scottish music scene has not ceased operating for one minute: I went directly from the RSNO's closing concert to hear the LSO in Edinburgh. Then the Perth Festival of the Arts was under way and I went haring off to hear The Sixteen. Then it was back down the road to immerse myself in the Cottier Chamber Project through June, took a sideways shift in July to cover all of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland's concerts, picked up sundry bits 'n' bobs of musical events including the great Marathon Classics Day at the end of July, then basically began my stint of coverage of Edinburgh Festival events, which re-introduced me to life as a commuter and which finished just last weekend.
And here we are. September already. It is the case however that not all regular concert-goers and diehard music-lovers can (or even want to) get on the road and out of town to catch the summer activities of orchestras and ensembles. So the three-to-four-month wait is not imaginary for many. Of course you might have listened to or watched some of the Albert Hall Proms, or you could plough through loads of albums to get your regular musical fix. But, if you're naturally a creature of the concert hall, none of these is quite as physical, tangible or exciting as sitting with an orchestra right in front of you, getting stuck into your favourite symphonies and concertos, is it?
So, not long to wait now. And if you are unfortunate enough to suffer from a terminal case of addiction to the music of Beethoven, as I am too, then you should know that, way before the RSNO and the SCO (whichever is your favourite) launch their winter seasons in early October, there is a major fix of Beethoven's music about to become available on the shelves in less than three weeks, courtesy of Glasgow Concert Halls. On Friday September 26, in the City Hall, Glasgow rolls out the next stage of its three-year project which will feature performances of all 32 of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and all 16 (or 17, depending on how you count them) of his String Quartets.
The artists undertaking this project are the Elias String Quartet and Llyr Williams, an astonishing pianist and, already, a supreme Beethovenian of our time.
Just last Friday, at my final Edinburgh Festival concert, I bumped into Sir Brian McMaster, a former director of the Edinburgh International Festival. It was McMaster who discovered Llyr Williams. He had spotted him at an event where Williams was accompanying singers and also had his own solo slot. McMaster instantly booked the Welshman, and before you could ask "How do you pronounce Llyr?", Williams was in Edinburgh, appearing at the Festival.
Since then, Williams, Welsh though he is to the core, has become almost an honorary Scot. We can't get enough of him. He's played recitals, chamber music and concertos here. He's done a Beethoven cycle in Perth. He's done one in Edinburgh, at Greyfriars Kirk, he might even have done one that I can't remember and he's now doing this one in Glasgow.
He'll have three concerts, one featuring early sonatas, one with middle period sonatas and one, on September 28, featuring the last three, epochal sonatas, opus numbers 109, 110 and 111. (Concert details in the Glasgow brochure.) Moreover, it was announced just late last week that the Wigmore Hall has booked Williams to play his first London cycle of the 32 Piano Sonatas over a three-year period. (He'll do another, concurrently, in Wales.) He's astounding, challenging and questioning. And the person he's challenging and questioning, all the time, is himself.
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