RSNO Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Usher Hall 8th December 2023 Review
RSNO Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker was on very safe ground at The Usher Hall Edinburgh tonight with a selection of music from this festive season favourite of so many people.
I have to admit that, for me, it was difficult not to imagine in my mind the famous ballet for which Tchaikovsky wrote this music. This was his third and last music for ballet and Tchaikovsky was sadly to die of cholera eleven months later in St Petersburg.
As you would expect in this selection of music, the most well known works were performed, including “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Decoration of the Christmas Tree”. Who though of a certain age can ever forget (like it or not) the words to that well known chocolate bar advert whenever they hear that music played? Sometimes I like to think that Tchaikovsky would just have raised a smile and laughed over this use of his music as there is simply so much wonderful music in this ballet score, including one of my favourite pieces ever, “Pas de deux: The Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy”.
It was good to actually see the orchestra perform this music tonight as opposed to them being in the orchestra pit for a ballet, as this gave everyone in the audience a chance to hear this wonderful music in an almost stripped back fashion without the movement of dancers. This was an opportunity too to watch how the instruments of the orchestra came together more clearly and in doing so I found many subtleties in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker that I had overlooked before.
The careful use of the RSNO Youth Choruses and the ability of conductor Andrey Boreyko to create with the RSNO a very distinctive and at times very interpretive performance of this classic work added just that right flavour and feeling to the evening.
As always, the RSNO likes to take some risks and challenges with its musical performances and tonight was no different with the first Act given over to two works that would be new to most people in the audience (they were certainly new to me).
The first performance of this evening was by Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva, and the Scottish Premiere of “Nova”. Described by the composer as “martial music in a patriotic sense” this work is a response to what happens to ordinary people when a war unfolds around them. In some ways this work is like many other similar works about war as the music evokes the sounds of combat, but it is more than that and raises many questions about leadership and the warrior that is in all of us if everything that we hold dear to us is in threat of being destroyed or taken away from us.
What makes a warrior? What makes a leader? What makes that unique person of the time and events that turns them into someone who can rally for a cause and become an elusive warrior leader? Victoria Poleva offers no definitive answers in this music as perhaps there are none.
Another Tchaikowsky work to finish the first half of the music this evening, but not Pyotr Ilyich, instead Andre Tchaikowsky (1935-1982). This Tchaikowsky was a Polish Jew born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The fact that this music “Concerto Classico for Violin and Orchestra” survived at all is amazing as the original score was only discovered at the bottom of a laundry basket 50 years after its creation and given its first public performance with the Warsaw Philharmonic in February 2021 by tonight’s violin soloist Ilya Gringolts and conductor Andrey Boreyko.
This UK premiere of “Concerto Classico for Violin and Orchestra” reveals this almost overlooked work to be one of amazing colour, emotion, subtlety and, when needed, power. This music could so easily have been the soundtrack to some epic film telling some great story of love and loss and for some reason it just created images and scenes in my head as soon as I heard this music.
The RSNO are firmly now in festive season mode, so a little reminder to anyone reading this review that they are back at the Usher Hall on 22nd December with “The Snowman”
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
I have to admit that, for me, it was difficult not to imagine in my mind the famous ballet for which Tchaikovsky wrote this music. This was his third and last music for ballet and Tchaikovsky was sadly to die of cholera eleven months later in St Petersburg.
As you would expect in this selection of music, the most well known works were performed, including “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Decoration of the Christmas Tree”. Who though of a certain age can ever forget (like it or not) the words to that well known chocolate bar advert whenever they hear that music played? Sometimes I like to think that Tchaikovsky would just have raised a smile and laughed over this use of his music as there is simply so much wonderful music in this ballet score, including one of my favourite pieces ever, “Pas de deux: The Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy”.
It was good to actually see the orchestra perform this music tonight as opposed to them being in the orchestra pit for a ballet, as this gave everyone in the audience a chance to hear this wonderful music in an almost stripped back fashion without the movement of dancers. This was an opportunity too to watch how the instruments of the orchestra came together more clearly and in doing so I found many subtleties in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker that I had overlooked before.
The careful use of the RSNO Youth Choruses and the ability of conductor Andrey Boreyko to create with the RSNO a very distinctive and at times very interpretive performance of this classic work added just that right flavour and feeling to the evening.
As always, the RSNO likes to take some risks and challenges with its musical performances and tonight was no different with the first Act given over to two works that would be new to most people in the audience (they were certainly new to me).
The first performance of this evening was by Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva, and the Scottish Premiere of “Nova”. Described by the composer as “martial music in a patriotic sense” this work is a response to what happens to ordinary people when a war unfolds around them. In some ways this work is like many other similar works about war as the music evokes the sounds of combat, but it is more than that and raises many questions about leadership and the warrior that is in all of us if everything that we hold dear to us is in threat of being destroyed or taken away from us.
What makes a warrior? What makes a leader? What makes that unique person of the time and events that turns them into someone who can rally for a cause and become an elusive warrior leader? Victoria Poleva offers no definitive answers in this music as perhaps there are none.
Another Tchaikowsky work to finish the first half of the music this evening, but not Pyotr Ilyich, instead Andre Tchaikowsky (1935-1982). This Tchaikowsky was a Polish Jew born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.
The fact that this music “Concerto Classico for Violin and Orchestra” survived at all is amazing as the original score was only discovered at the bottom of a laundry basket 50 years after its creation and given its first public performance with the Warsaw Philharmonic in February 2021 by tonight’s violin soloist Ilya Gringolts and conductor Andrey Boreyko.
This UK premiere of “Concerto Classico for Violin and Orchestra” reveals this almost overlooked work to be one of amazing colour, emotion, subtlety and, when needed, power. This music could so easily have been the soundtrack to some epic film telling some great story of love and loss and for some reason it just created images and scenes in my head as soon as I heard this music.
The RSNO are firmly now in festive season mode, so a little reminder to anyone reading this review that they are back at the Usher Hall on 22nd December with “The Snowman”
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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