Music
Save The Old Royal High School Benefit Concert
Stockbridge Parish Church, Edinburgh
Miranda Heggie
four stars
IT IS the focal point of one of the capital’s most iconic skylines, and plans to turn Edinburgh’s Old Royal High School on Calton Hill into a luxury hotel have certainly been controversial. Thursday’s concert, organised by the Architectural Society of Scotland, was a fundraiser to pay legal costs needed to contest the hotel developer’s latest proposals.
Among the generous donations were the services of a sterling team of musicians. The evening began with a beautifully balanced set of Schubert lieder, sung by soprano Lorna Anderson and tenor Jamie MacDougall, exquisitely accompanied by Malcolm Martineau. Another of the country's finest pianists, Steven Osborne, then took to the keyboard with a selection of Rachmaninov’s Etudes-Tableaux. The passion and array of colour radiating from these "study-picures" was quite remarkable, from glassy impressionism to full on Russian fire. MacDougall and Anderson returned to the stage for the second half with Martineau back at the piano for some more modern English song. Anderson’s performance of Howells’s King David was at once mournful, dignified yet uplifting, and MacDougall injected his usual charm and humour into a pair of Britten folksongs. Soprano and tenor were then joined by mezzo-soprano Laura Margaret Smith and bass-baritone Arshak Kuzikyan for Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer. The quartet’s vocal blend was sublime, and it was a rare treat to hear both Martineau and Osborne duet, although it would have been nice to have heard some solos from Smith and Kuzikyan earlier in the programme.
Though plans for the former high school to serve as a new home to St Mary’s Music School have been approved by councillors, this was, bizarrely, not mentioned. However, if anything were to champion the case for music to be nurtured, this concert was surely it.
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