EIF music reviews: Mozart’s La Clemenza Di Tito – Scottish Chamber Orchestra | Fibonacci Quartet + more

Usher Hall

As the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) continue their concert performances of Mozart operas with La Clemenza Di Tito, who needs expensive productions when this combination of sensational singers and top-notch musicians is such a triumph.

Directing from the fortepiano, conductor Maxim Emelyanychev once again worked his magic in bringing together a perfect blend of voices with the period instrument ensemble.

Written in haste to celebrate Emperor Leopold II’s 1791 coronation this might be a more formal opera, but the dilemma’s the characters face are compelling. And in today’s politics where forgiveness is in short supply the notion of a leader who has it in spades, even after an assassination attempt, was moving.

As Tito, tenor Giovanni Sala was suitably commanding in public, backed by a supportive SCO Chorus, and human in private.

Events are set in motion when Vitellia (Tara Erraught) who aspires to be Empress is miffed by a potential rival. She persuades Sesto, who is in love with her, to kill his best friend Tito. In the trouser role of the conflicted Sesto, mezzo-soprano Angela Brower dominates the opera and was absolutely superb.

When Sesto is about to be arrested by Publio (Peter Kálmán), he begs Vitellia to ‘look at me’, she can’t and the musical tug of war between the three is heart wrenching. The duet between lovers Annio (mezzo Maria Warenberg) and Sesto’s sister Servilia (Hera Hyesang Park) was also beautifully sung.

Tito survives and in the more intimate second act the three main characters face an inner turmoil as Sesto is about to be thrown to wild beasts.

Mozart writes the most ravishing instrumental obbligati for them – a soothing clarinet for Sesto while the basset horn urges Vitellia to confess – both exquisitely played by the soloists and everyone is forgiven in a magnificent finale.

Susan Nickalls

Fibonacci Quartet ★★★★★

Queen’s Hall

You can quickly see why the young, Guildhall-trained Fibonacci Quartet have done so well in international competitions. In short, because they’re astonishingly good.

To be more precise, because of their uncanny balance of intricate, meaningful detail and grander architecture, their abundant, unstoppable energy, and their evident passion and love for what they’re doing - and their compelling desire to convey that to their listeners.

All those qualities were richly on display in their Queen’s Hall opener, the rough-edged, densely intricate First Quartet by Helen Grime, given a glistening, muscular account by the Fibonacci foursome, one that highlighted the music’s connections to Bartók and Ligeti, and which glowed with insight and conviction.

It made for a bold, sometimes strident opener, and the passion continued in what was at times quite a hard-edged Janáček Intimate Letters Quartet, which showcased the players’ remarkable adaptability of sound and texture, and their balance of individual definition and group blend.

The Janáček’s white-hot passions cooled slightly - or at least expanded over a broader canvas - in the Fibonaccis’ closing Smetana From My Life Quartet, though there was no mistaking its outpourings of emotion.

An encore mashing up On the Street Where You Live and I Could Have Danced All Night in a witty but touching arrangement by the Quartet themselves got all the same care and attention. An exceptional EIF debut.

David Kettle

Budapest Festival Orchestra ★★★★

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Dance music across the centuries was the inspiration for this contrasting programme from the multi-talented conductor Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra.

In his Orchestral Suite No 4 in D Bach looks back to the stately French dances made popular in the mid-baroque period. However these elegant bourées, menuetts and a gavotte, performed on period instruments, sounded crisp and fresh in Fischer’s hands, especially the Réjouissance with its magnificent flourishes on natural trumpets.

It was a delightful conceit of Fischer to echo Bach by focusing on more recent contemporary dance forms in his Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra, In Memoriam J S Bach.

Violin soloist Guy Braunstein firstly paid homage to the past in a virtuosic prelude followed by a laid back Bossa Nova, swinging Ragtime, seductive Tango - Piazzolla style – and bluesy Boogie-woogie movements. It was foot-tappingly good.

Bartók explores a much darker world in The Miraculous Mandarin, a pantomime ballet based on Melchio Lengyel’s short story. The orchestra chillingly brought to life this shocking, murderous tale where even the harp sounded menacing.

This powerful performance, pushing the boundaries of tonality and technique, cast large shadows on a city wall to reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves.

Susan Nickalls

Rising Stars of Woodwind ★★★★

The Hub

What a brilliant programme for starry young wind players – iconic quintets, all from late 20th century composers, all spikey, challenging and slightly crazily stamped with their composers´ personality.

EIF´s mentoring programme pulled five super-talents from an international call, gave them a scarily short time to rehearse with fine mentors, clarinettist/composer Mark Simpson and RSNO principal flute Katherine Bryan, also sending them out on schools´ educational projects. Lucky kids.

The stars all deserve their names here: Lucy Wong, flute; Ella Dorothea Delbruck, oboe, Guillermo Ramasasa, clarinet, Emily Ambrose, bassoon and Tom Findlay, horn. Each one also had to introduce a work. Shyness made some detail inaudible, but who cared – we were there for superb musicmaking.

Ligeti´s 5 Bagatelles are lucid little miracles, each like a fantastical peep show. Elliot Carter, not a composer to favour musical emulsion, relishes each instrument´s individual sound in his quintet, and here, although no one pushed for attention, the horn´s searing high lines were a wonder.

We heard Berio´s eccentric Opus Number Zoo, a kind of cackling circus setting sour little Rhoda Levine poems where animals make arch, theatrical statements as though commenting on human stupidity. A faun hears the crack of a bomb and ponders man´s will to destroy the gentle and beautiful. Cats brawl and banter. It all seemed horribly pertinent.

Last, a rarity, Ruth Crawford Seeger´s Suite. Seeger, a significant figure in mid-20th century American music, writes intricately constructed lines and clever repetitions with odd moments of chorale. It´s a fascinating piece. Yet Aaron Copland was to diss her in years to come for 'daring to write like a man’.

Both Bryant and Simpson offered highly – possibly excessively – virtuosic solos, Bryant´s a whirl of notes by Pierre-Octave Ferroud, and Simpson, his own terrifying exploration of Henri Michaud´s surreal poetry. Extraordinary both, but an unnecessary intrusion into youthful brilliance and commitment.

Mary Miller

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