RSNO Håkan Hardenberger performs Night-Sky-Blue Usher Hall Edinburgh 9th May 2025 Review
RSNO Håkan Hardenberger performs night-sky-blue at The Usher Hall Edinburgh tonight was a chance for people to hear a man whom many people consider to be the world’s greatest living classical trumpeter not only perform, but do so on a new work by composer Helen Grime.
For some people in the audience this programme of music, which also included Tōru Takemitsu’s “How Slow the Wind” (1991), might have been a bit of a step into the unknown for them, taking them away from the comfort and familiarity of works by composers such as Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin, Bach, and many other well-known names in the classical music world. More familiar ground was however provided with the Tchaikovsky “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture”.
This was very much an evening where music was used to tell a story and often it was the natural world, the moon and the skies above us that were the inspiration for all that we were to hear. Starting with Helen Grime’s trumpet concerto, “night-sky blue” takes us into the evocative wonders of nature and the theme of the night and nocturnal gardens.
With a delicate touch, Grime lays the foundations of a world of fantasy and wonder whilst Håkan Hardenberger creates increasingly complex musical soundscapes on his trumpet. That theme of the nocturnal sounds is complemented with careful use of the RSNO as at times unexpected soundscapes fill the air, changing in speed and volume, only to disappear and then sometimes reappear almost at random. All too soon, this almost magical soundscape is gone.
The love theme from Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” is now perhaps one of the best known and loved works of all time and with this fantasy overture leading us on to “night-sky-blue”, somehow, that theme of night-time and the moon was perhaps inadvertently continuing the story of these two star-crossed but doomed young lovers. Somehow tonight these old and new stories seemed to complement each other so well whilst allowing each to retain their distinctive identities.
This evening’s music was full of musical surprises, and another of them was Debussy “Clair de lune”, but not the arrangement that many of us are more familiar with. This one, by Leopold Stokowski, was a fully orchestrated arrangement that was originally intended to be a part of the Walt Disney classic “Fantasia” from 1940. This scene never made it into that film in the end, but it has now been restored to it in some newer releases. Is more really more though in some cases, or did Debussy get things just right with his far sparser original orchestration?
Takemitsu “How Slow the Wind” continued tonight’s theme of nature, but it also has a deeper meaning too. The wind is one of nature’s great sculptors. Given time it will weather away all that it touches. In many ways, Takemitsu is telling not only a deeper story but also creating a wonderful tone poem.
Inspired by a painting (well several versions on a theme by the artist), “Isle of the Dead” allows Rachmaninov to take us into the world of his rich and at times disturbing tone poem. The journey that Rachmaninov and the RSNO take us on here is full of melodrama and at time foreboding, but despite this, the wonder of how Rachmaninov manipulates this atmospheric story never fades.
This was in many respects a brave programme of music for the RSNO to put together. It is always a risk to take an audience on a journey into the unfamiliar, but for me it all worked well as, without an element of risk, without giving new and challenging music an audience, so much of music’s future would be lost forever.
The full programme of music tonight, with Nodoka Okisawa, Conductor was as below.
Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Helen Grime Trumpet Concerto night-sky-blue Scottish Premiere
Debussy orch. Stokowski Clair de lune from Suite bergamasque
Takemitsu How Slow the Wind
Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
For some people in the audience this programme of music, which also included Tōru Takemitsu’s “How Slow the Wind” (1991), might have been a bit of a step into the unknown for them, taking them away from the comfort and familiarity of works by composers such as Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin, Bach, and many other well-known names in the classical music world. More familiar ground was however provided with the Tchaikovsky “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture”.
This was very much an evening where music was used to tell a story and often it was the natural world, the moon and the skies above us that were the inspiration for all that we were to hear. Starting with Helen Grime’s trumpet concerto, “night-sky blue” takes us into the evocative wonders of nature and the theme of the night and nocturnal gardens.
With a delicate touch, Grime lays the foundations of a world of fantasy and wonder whilst Håkan Hardenberger creates increasingly complex musical soundscapes on his trumpet. That theme of the nocturnal sounds is complemented with careful use of the RSNO as at times unexpected soundscapes fill the air, changing in speed and volume, only to disappear and then sometimes reappear almost at random. All too soon, this almost magical soundscape is gone.
The love theme from Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” is now perhaps one of the best known and loved works of all time and with this fantasy overture leading us on to “night-sky-blue”, somehow, that theme of night-time and the moon was perhaps inadvertently continuing the story of these two star-crossed but doomed young lovers. Somehow tonight these old and new stories seemed to complement each other so well whilst allowing each to retain their distinctive identities.
This evening’s music was full of musical surprises, and another of them was Debussy “Clair de lune”, but not the arrangement that many of us are more familiar with. This one, by Leopold Stokowski, was a fully orchestrated arrangement that was originally intended to be a part of the Walt Disney classic “Fantasia” from 1940. This scene never made it into that film in the end, but it has now been restored to it in some newer releases. Is more really more though in some cases, or did Debussy get things just right with his far sparser original orchestration?
Takemitsu “How Slow the Wind” continued tonight’s theme of nature, but it also has a deeper meaning too. The wind is one of nature’s great sculptors. Given time it will weather away all that it touches. In many ways, Takemitsu is telling not only a deeper story but also creating a wonderful tone poem.
Inspired by a painting (well several versions on a theme by the artist), “Isle of the Dead” allows Rachmaninov to take us into the world of his rich and at times disturbing tone poem. The journey that Rachmaninov and the RSNO take us on here is full of melodrama and at time foreboding, but despite this, the wonder of how Rachmaninov manipulates this atmospheric story never fades.
This was in many respects a brave programme of music for the RSNO to put together. It is always a risk to take an audience on a journey into the unfamiliar, but for me it all worked well as, without an element of risk, without giving new and challenging music an audience, so much of music’s future would be lost forever.
The full programme of music tonight, with Nodoka Okisawa, Conductor was as below.
Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Helen Grime Trumpet Concerto night-sky-blue Scottish Premiere
Debussy orch. Stokowski Clair de lune from Suite bergamasque
Takemitsu How Slow the Wind
Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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