In the Steppes of Central Europe Reviews

The Herald
Keith Bruce
23 January 2012
*****

There were unmissable parallels between the programmes that the SSO and the SCO played in the City Halls at the end of last week, from the selection and sequencing of the pieces in the programme to the fact that principal clarinet Maximiliano Martin was kept pretty busy. Ultimately, this was an even better evening, and the crucial extra ingredient was conductor Robin Ticciati.

Fresh from his debut in the pit at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and with his other new employer, Glyndebourne, represented in the audience, Ticciati was beginning a project to explore the music of Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti with the SCO, with the Hamburg Concerto for horn and chamber orchestra. This is scored for the composer’s very specific edition of a chamber orchestra, principal horn Alec Frank-Gemmill joined by the rest of his section on natural horns in altering keys, and guest leader Daniel Rowland, of the Brodsky’s, at the centre, in familiar string quartet format, of a very compact ensemble. The sequence of pithy and witty movements reinterprets older musical forms and is packed with ideas, reaching a peak of complexity in the pivotal mid-point Kanon.

The Ligeti was bracketed by Zoltan Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta, which the SCO has recorded with Sir Charles Mackerras and makes the band sing thanks to orchestration of the Tchaikovsky class, and the Fifth Symphony of Dvorak. Ticciati’s account of the symphony was crisp and beautifully balanced, making the oldest music in the programme sound spankingly box-fresh, leading compellingly to the flowing dynamics of the finale. This was musicianship that Sussex and Manhattan are learning to love, and we are fortunate to have regularly in Scotland.

The Scotsman
Carol Main
23 January 2012
****

They may both share the cultural heritage of central Europe, but the music of Dvorak and Ligeti sounded a million miles apart at the SCO’s concert. Dvorak’s Symphony No 5 is awash with an abundance of warm tunefulness stemming from the traditional folksong of his Czech homeland. It spilled out from the orchestra as if in bright sunshine. Principal conductor Robin Ticciati expertly steered the music’s flow with affection, yet not without grit and bite in the darker slow movement.

Ligeti, on the other hand, is sparing in the usage of his compositional material. Bringing back tunes time and time again as the music develops is very definitely not his style, as the Hamburg Concerto for horn and chamber orchestra written in 1999 demonstrated. In seven compact movements, the piece’s micro-tunings and harmonies were described by the composer himself as “weird”. Performed with breathtaking precision by SCO principal horn Alec Frank-Gemmill in the solo role, there was a complex mystique to how his part and the four orchestral horns utilise the natural harmonics of their valveless instruments. At times, the resulting tonalities may assault the ears but there is a distinctive appeal to Ligeti’s music, known most widely through its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There was magic and mystery to Kodaly too, his Dances of Galanta a rarely heard treat in Ticciati’s shaping, although, like the Dvorak, the scoring was almost too big for the Queen’s Hall space.