Perth’s beautiful, state-of-the-art concert hall was the setting for the first of three world premieres, all by British composers, which lit up last week’s listening. Wind players of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, directed by Nicholas Daniel, oboist supreme, gave the first performance of Overflow by Anna Clyne. A keen collaborator with dancers, film-makers and visual artists too, Clyne is now the SCO’s associate composer: on the evidence of this irrepressible piece, this will prove a fruitful partnership.
Her inspiration is Emily Dickinson’s By the Sea and a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi. Opening with a sturdy bassoon drone, it heaves and shimmers in its intimations of a tiny pearl moving on the ocean floor. The 10 players also performed André Caplet’s voluptuous Suite persane and an arrangement of Dvořák’s Czech Suite, outstanding in each.
Long dedicated to the new, the Hallé’s latest streamed concert featured Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which the orchestra premiered in the UK in 1935 with the composer as soloist. That brilliant composer-virtuoso pianist of our own times Stephen Hough was soloist, conducted by Mark Elder. The Hallé then gave the first performance of Huw Watkins’s Symphony No 2, completed in January. (They also premiered, successfully, his first, in 2016.)
Watkins, unafraid of tonality and melody, meets tradition head on, with jostling, knotty rhythms and incisively heard orchestration, building swathes of mutating sound colours out of tiny cells. This is a substantial piece. I look forward to hearing it live.
In the few words left, I’d say check out Mark-Anthony Turnage’s poetic Lament, for solo violin (Daniel Hope) and string orchestra: the baton of string music – a notable English habit, from Elgar to Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Maconchy – has passed to a characterful new runner. It was commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and premiered on France Musique. Vive l’amitié!
The SCO’s Caplet, Clyne and Dvořák is available on YouTube until 15 May
The Halle’s Trailblazing concert, featuring Huw Watkins’s Symphony No 2, is available until 15 July
The Turnage premiere is available on France Musique until 16 May
