United Kingdom MacCunn, Bruch, Arnold, Beach: Shuwei Zuo (violin), Todmorden Orchestra / Nicholas Concannon Hodges (conductor). Todmorden Town Hall, Calderdale, 19.3.2022. (RBa)
Hamish MacCunn – The Land of the Mountain and the Flood
Bruch – Scottish Fantasy
Arnold – Four Scottish Dances
Amy Beach – Symphony in E minor, ‘Gaelic Symphony’
At its Spring concert, the Todmorden Orchestra has shown again its resolve to venture beyond routine choices. The Scottish-themed programme kicked up sand and dust with ceilidh abandon and risk-taking.
Hamish MacCunn may be known for such exotica as the opera Jeannie Deans or the concert overtures The Dowie Dens o’Yarrow and The Ship o’ the Fiend. Today, we heard The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, his most popular overture. Part of the piece formed the signature tune for BBC TV’s Sutherland’s Law (1973-1976), and EMI had it brandish the Scottish flag in its long-lived collection Music of the Four Countries which dates back to vinyl days in 1978. The overture also appears on Hyperion’s more recent all-MacCunn disc. The orchestra, some 53 players, artfully evoked the mist and mysteries, from which emerged a stoic march enhanced by the occasional skirl. It was all done con molto passione. The composer’s embattled cymbal crashes were over the top but otherwise the intense atmosphere was finely sustained.
The first half ended with another piece that has large audience pull – it was recorded by Heifetz, Oistrakh, Chung, Campoli and Little, among many others. Max Bruch was a fixture ‘down the road’ in Liverpool in 1880-1883. The four-movement Scottish Fantasy, dedicated to Sarasate, vies with Bruch’s three violin concertos; he completed it in the first year of his time with Liverpool Philharmonic Society. This substantial piece was quite moody, lyrical and discreet in the hands of soloist Shuwei Zuo, with her finely spun violin sound mostly rising shoulder-high. The work ends with accustomed fireworks. This was against the backdrop of the full orchestra, where the harp, on occasion, registered strongly. That is as it should be: the Fantasy’s title says ‘für die Violine mit Orchester und Harfe’.
Malcolm Arnold’s piano piece Variations on a Ukrainian theme, nicely arranged locally for clarinet and strings, opened the concert in the now-common tribute. The piece is understated, yet soulfully attractive. Arnold the dazzling maestro took over for the Four Scottish Dances, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall on 8 June 1957 by the composer leading the BBC Concert Orchestra. Today, the Town Hall echoed thunderously to the strathspey, reel and fling in all their tartan flummery and occasionally whiskey-infused uppitiness, familiar from Arnold’s Tam O’Shanter and Hobson’s Choice. He left us in no doubt of his mastery of poetry in the third dance which was most beautifully sung: ‘a calm summer’s day in the Hebrides’. Breathtaking indeed. It would have been unconventional but the piece might better have concluded the concert to give us an emotional upswing.
The concert ended with Amy Beach’s four-movement forty-minute Gaelic Symphony, written a decade after the MacCunn and some two decades after the Bruch. It was recorded many years ago by the Royal Philharmonic under Karl Krueger and more recently by Neeme Järvi on Chandos (CHAN8958) and Kenneth Schermerhorn. On 8 March this year, there was a studio broadcast by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard. Broadcasts and recordings are one thing but real concert performances quite another. This one spoke as a massive and ambitious climax to the evening, crucially aided by a most accomplished wind section and a gloriously fulsome brass section complete with five horns and tuba. Perhaps the symphony’s unfamiliarity played against it; the applause began to fade before the conductor had thanked the triumphant leaders and sections of the orchestra. It was a complex and unfamiliar work, well played.
As for risks, the conductor and this well rounded orchestra are not yet done. On 25 June 2022, we will hear Kalinnikov’s triumphantly attractive First Symphony.
Rob Barnett