Edinburgh Festival

BBC SSO/Alsop & RSNO/Chan

Edinburgh Academy Junior School

Keith Bruce

four stars

A GENERATION separates conductors Marin Alsop, from New York, and Elim Chan, from Hong Kong, but it is only within the latter’s career that seeing a woman on the podium has ceased to be a novelty. It was apparent from their reception at these two back-to-back concerts that the Festival audience is wildly enthusiastic about this overdue development.

In what was possibly not entirely planned programming, there were remarkable similarities between the music directed by Alsop for her guest appearance with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and by the Principal Guest Conductor of the RSNO the following evening. Sunday and Monday both concluded with a Beethoven Symphony and began with a contemporary piece by an American woman, with a through-composed work in concerto form in the middle.

To push the parallel further, those two new works were for the strings alone and worked with the possibilities of the instruments being either bowed or plucked. That is obvious from the title of Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, the violinist-turned-composer’s very American-sounding work, which manages to reference minimalism, Western movie soundtracks, and a country hoe-down. Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte looks to the Old Country, and particularly the music of Joseph Haydn, in a work that spans the centuries in its pulsing neo-classicism before ending on a solo for the orchestra’s guest first cello.

The BBC SSO’s leader Laura Samuel was the featured soloist in A Spell for Green Corn, by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a work derived from the Orkney tradition of having a folk fiddler bless the sowing season with tunes to bring a good harvest. Commissioned in the early 1990s by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, it delivers a fulsome crop as the other sections of the orchestra join in, culminating in a boisterous party with brass and percussion.

Chan’s concerto partner was Argentinian Sol Gabetta, who has long championed the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Camille Saint-Saens, a favourite of many players of her instrument but still less often heard than works by Elgar and Dvorak. Chan is well-respected as a collaborator by star soloists and conductor and cellist have worked together with Antwerp Symphony, where Chan is Chief Conductor. Gabetta’s beautiful golden sound was a little swamped by the orchestra at the start, but issues of balance were soon resolved for her to demonstrate her command of the technically-demanding work.

Beethoven’s First Symphony is often played as a pre-revolutionary nod to his antecedents, but Chan approached it as a statement of intent in what was a bit of a roller-coaster of a reading. This was a small RSNO with a few unfamiliar faces in key positions, and though the third movement began fresh and bright enough, it did seem a little laboured later on. Elsewhere, however, the orchestra produced a very full sound, and the conductor brought out the echoes of the work’s radical opening in the finale with meticulous skill.

By comparison, however, Alsop’s Beethoven Five with the SSO was a barn-stormer. Conducting the music from memory, she directed every detail of the work, drawing a splendidly dynamic performance from the players and the best orchestral sound we’ve heard in the EIF’s temporary tent.