Adding to the recent run of concert performances of opera in Scotland – although it really transcended that category – as well as being the best collaboration between Scotland’s national orchestra and the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, the second half of this concert will live in the memory for a long time.
Ravel’s one-act opera L’enfant et les sortileges is a magical piece from between the wars of the last century in which a rebellious child is taught some lessons about life by objects and animals. In a brilliant use of this hall, the front rows of the stalls had been removed and the orchestra platform extended so that the action could take place above and behind the musicians.
The child was sung by mezzo Anna Stephany and all the other roles by student soloists from the Conservatoire, many of them also part of the RCS Chamber Choir, prepared by Andrew Nunn, while the SNO’s own Youth Chorus, directed by Patrick Barrett, added their voices from the choir stalls above.
Cast by Jane Irwin, costumed by Ailsa Munro and directed by Roxana Cole, the staging was everything it needed to be, while the crucial role of the instrumental soloists, often as much part of the action as the singers, was always as visible as it was audible.
The fact that such an imaginative performance of an exotic work played to a very well-filled house was down to the complementary programming before the interval.
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is exactly contemporaneous and the piano soloist was Ethan Loch, whose regular appearances in RSNO seasons are now eagerly anticipated.
As might have been expected from a player who has unveiled his own compositions in this company – and played a cadenza from his Piano
Concerto No1 by way of an encore – Loch’s version of this popular piece was full of individual touches.
If his phrasing showed appreciation for the work’s jazz sensibility and added ornamentation acknowledged the improvising basis of that music, he was partnered in that by conductor Thomas Sondergard and the musicians, from first clarinet Timothy Orpen’s opening flourish through to the dance-band swagger of the closing bars.
The programme had begun with the perfect choice of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas, its narrative not so very far from the Ravel, and famously co-opted by Walt Disney in Fantasia.
On the evening the RSNO launched the programme for its 2026/27 season, the orchestra could not have put on a more triumphant show.
Review Link:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25978004.music-review-royal-scottish-national-orchestra-glasgow/
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