Music
Varese Sarabande 40th Anniversary Concert
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce
three stars
GLASGOW – and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – missed a trick when a stroke of good fortune brought producer Robert Townson and legendary film composers Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein to the City Halls to begin a series of film soundtrack recordings that matches the number of years in the business of the record label on which they appear. Had the city had the vision to establish a festival of film music in 1995, it would have pre-empted Europe’s premiere events in Krakow and now Tenerife.
As it is, this concert was conducted by Diego Navarro, who established the latter a decade ago, and amongst the collection of images of himself with famous screen composers which Townson projected above the band during his presentation of the concert could be spotted Robert Piakowski, artistic director of the Polish event.
Now, although concerts of film music are among the RSNO’s best attended, that link with the Varese Sarabande label is part of the orchestra’s history, which will partly account for a less-than-packed house for music of huge popular appeal. Townson’s programme was full of compromises and failed to showcase the range of historical scores the band worked on (there was no Bernard Hermann at all for example), although the two composers in attendance, David Arnold and Rachel Portman, contributed some of the best music. Arnold’s Four Brothers and Independence Day provided the bold action music for the big finish after rather too much in the way of romantic themes, and Portman’s scores from Never Let Me Go and Great Moments in Aviation preceded a Shrek suite to round off the first half.
That sequence featured the RSNO Chorus and an excellent cameo from soprano and Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Sofia Troncoso, whose solo opening on the Portman, right at the bottom of her range, was especially impressive. With orchestra leader Sharon Roffman soloist on Partrick Doyle’s As You Like It love theme and RSNO Junior Chorus member Beth Taylor singing the Lullaby the evening's conductor wrote for Spanish film Passage to Dawn, it was the home-nurtured team that made the finest contributions to this trip to Hollywood.
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