SCO Mozart Flute Concerto Queen's Hall Edinburgh 14th November 2024 Review
SCO Mozart Flute Concerto at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight was one of four works on the concert programme, below, and as so often there was a connective thread between all of the works. In this case, that thread was Vienna, a name and a place synonymous with music for many centuries.
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No 2
MOZART Flute Concerto in G
SCHMELZER (arr MANZE) Serenata
MOZART Symphony No 35 ‘Haffner’ in D Major
Starting this review with the title work of tonight’s musical programme seems appropriate here, as Mozart himself famously left in writing to his father an indication that he did not personally like this instrument too much. Whatever his reasons for this comment at the time, it is obvious from many of his works and this one in particular that he had a deep understanding of just what the flute was capable of delivering both as an orchestral and a solo instrument.
Perhaps even a genius like Mozart was feeling the pressure of having to write this work (and others) to a specified commission time schedule when other matters were on his mind at the time – women being a large diversion of his time at this moment in his life.
Bringing MOZART Flute Concerto in G to life in its three very different movements, Spanish flautist André Cebrián was obviously in a very special music and performance space for this work and his enthusiasm and sheer visible pleasure from playing made it even more difficult to understand that this concerto may have been written by someone who did not always share André Cebrián’s love of the flute.
A short work followed on by André Cebrián after this concerto to raise awareness and funds (through the purchase of his CD) for the many music schools, staff and pupils who have lot so much in the recent Spanish floods.
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No 2, the opening work tonight, was a rare moment of someone being given the opportunity to review the work of his younger self and somehow incorporate that into his now older and very different composer.
The first half of this work was written in 1906, but for many reasons not completed by Schoenberg. It was to be 33 years later in 1939 when the opportunity arose to finish this work. By Schoenberg’s own admission, looking at this earlier work left him trying to understand what his earlier self had been attempting to create. The two movements are very different in both their nature and musical structure and sound.
In the earlier work, Schoenberg is still clearly heavily influenced by the then centuries old conventional structure of tonal music with a home key as its musical centre. By the time of returning to this work, Schoenberg was one of the great explorers of atonal music and the freedom that this re-writing of how music could work allowed him now, without the need to constantly revolve around a key note, to free the orchestra and its instruments to create new soundscapes where anything was now possible.
For me, the later 1939 movement here was by far the more interesting of the two, and just what Schoenberg and his contemporaries did in opening the possibilities of atonal music cannot be over-estimated. No Schoenberg, and so many of our revered pop and rock classics would have been impossible, including many Beatles songs from their 1966-1970 studio only recording years.
The second half of tonight’s music programme took us all back to a more conventional music structure, and to many people in the audience maybe safer and more comfortable ground, particularly the final work, MOZART Symphony No 35 ‘Haffner’ in D Major. An important commission like this one, from the very wealthy Haffner family, was something that Mozart needed both financially and for his musical prestige, so it is not surprising that this work is everything that people of the day, and now, would have expected from him.
Before Mozart, we heard a composer that I know very little about, who was we were told as important in the 17th century as Mozart was in the 18th century – Johan Heinrich Schmelzer and SCHMELZER (arr MANZE) Serenata. Here tonight’s conductor and musical historian Andrew Manze gave us an insight into not only a composer, but a period of music that we all too rarely hear performed live today.
Unfortunately only small clues to the original purpose of these works have survived, and the educated guess is for some sort of theatrical purpose. Schmelzer was a highly respected musician in his lifetime and Andrew Manze’s arrangement for the SCO tonight was full of surprises and the re-creation by high end strings of what was possibly meant to be funeral bells was one of them.
As always with the SCO, familiar sounds contrasting with new and often unexpected ones in an enjoyable and relaxed evening of music.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No 2
MOZART Flute Concerto in G
SCHMELZER (arr MANZE) Serenata
MOZART Symphony No 35 ‘Haffner’ in D Major
Starting this review with the title work of tonight’s musical programme seems appropriate here, as Mozart himself famously left in writing to his father an indication that he did not personally like this instrument too much. Whatever his reasons for this comment at the time, it is obvious from many of his works and this one in particular that he had a deep understanding of just what the flute was capable of delivering both as an orchestral and a solo instrument.
Perhaps even a genius like Mozart was feeling the pressure of having to write this work (and others) to a specified commission time schedule when other matters were on his mind at the time – women being a large diversion of his time at this moment in his life.
Bringing MOZART Flute Concerto in G to life in its three very different movements, Spanish flautist André Cebrián was obviously in a very special music and performance space for this work and his enthusiasm and sheer visible pleasure from playing made it even more difficult to understand that this concerto may have been written by someone who did not always share André Cebrián’s love of the flute.
A short work followed on by André Cebrián after this concerto to raise awareness and funds (through the purchase of his CD) for the many music schools, staff and pupils who have lot so much in the recent Spanish floods.
SCHOENBERG Chamber Symphony No 2, the opening work tonight, was a rare moment of someone being given the opportunity to review the work of his younger self and somehow incorporate that into his now older and very different composer.
The first half of this work was written in 1906, but for many reasons not completed by Schoenberg. It was to be 33 years later in 1939 when the opportunity arose to finish this work. By Schoenberg’s own admission, looking at this earlier work left him trying to understand what his earlier self had been attempting to create. The two movements are very different in both their nature and musical structure and sound.
In the earlier work, Schoenberg is still clearly heavily influenced by the then centuries old conventional structure of tonal music with a home key as its musical centre. By the time of returning to this work, Schoenberg was one of the great explorers of atonal music and the freedom that this re-writing of how music could work allowed him now, without the need to constantly revolve around a key note, to free the orchestra and its instruments to create new soundscapes where anything was now possible.
For me, the later 1939 movement here was by far the more interesting of the two, and just what Schoenberg and his contemporaries did in opening the possibilities of atonal music cannot be over-estimated. No Schoenberg, and so many of our revered pop and rock classics would have been impossible, including many Beatles songs from their 1966-1970 studio only recording years.
The second half of tonight’s music programme took us all back to a more conventional music structure, and to many people in the audience maybe safer and more comfortable ground, particularly the final work, MOZART Symphony No 35 ‘Haffner’ in D Major. An important commission like this one, from the very wealthy Haffner family, was something that Mozart needed both financially and for his musical prestige, so it is not surprising that this work is everything that people of the day, and now, would have expected from him.
Before Mozart, we heard a composer that I know very little about, who was we were told as important in the 17th century as Mozart was in the 18th century – Johan Heinrich Schmelzer and SCHMELZER (arr MANZE) Serenata. Here tonight’s conductor and musical historian Andrew Manze gave us an insight into not only a composer, but a period of music that we all too rarely hear performed live today.
Unfortunately only small clues to the original purpose of these works have survived, and the educated guess is for some sort of theatrical purpose. Schmelzer was a highly respected musician in his lifetime and Andrew Manze’s arrangement for the SCO tonight was full of surprises and the re-creation by high end strings of what was possibly meant to be funeral bells was one of them.
As always with the SCO, familiar sounds contrasting with new and often unexpected ones in an enjoyable and relaxed evening of music.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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