28 American tour

After its first major European tour in 1967, the Scottish National Orchestra made a brief but unremarkable trip to Norway before scoring the international coup that really mattered - its first American tour, ending with concerts in New York and Washington. By then, in 1976, David Richardson, formerly of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, had replaced Robert Ponsonby as administrator - vowing that he wanted the orchestra to perform all 104 Haydn symphonies in the course of his stay in Scotland. Though he failed in this admirable endeavour, he enabled the conductor Alexander Gibson to expand the orchestra’s repertoire in other directions. As for me, I had a new editor,  the quietly austere but excellent Eric Mackay,  who continued to allow me the freedom to do my job which I had enjoyed as staff music critic under Alastair Dunnett. By this time, Dunnett had been elevated at the age of 65  to the chairmanship of Thomson Scottish Petroleum, an offshoot of the Thomson Organisation which ran The Scotsman, The Times, and the Sunday Times (before Rupert Murdoch got his hands on the London-based papers) as well as many outfits in Canada.

But Eric Mackay’s reign at The Scotsman proved just as beneficial as Dunnett’s, and when David Richardson invited me to join the Scottish National Orchestra for the climax of its American tour, Mackay immediately gave it his blessing, not least because Richardson offered infinitely better financial terms than Robert Ponsonby had previously done. The SNO would pay my air fares, hotel bills, and travel inside America in return for articles and reviews -  an arrangement that thereafter became standard when a critic was invited to tour with a Scottish orchestra. If I did not enjoy myself, he said, he would accept what I wrote in criticism.  Malcolm Rayment of The Herald was likewise invited, along with a feature writer from The Guardian, and Malcolm’s editor this time gave him permission to go.

 Arriving in New York a day ahead of the orchestra, I had some precious hours of sight-seeing, walking the length of an autumnally sparkling Fifth Avenue from Central Park to Washington Square, pausing en route to look round Tiffany’s, watch the outdoor skaters on their rink, and browse in Barnes and Noble’s bookshop. Later I  had time to circulate the Guggenheim Museum, be overwhelmed by Guernica in the Museum of Modern Art, visit the Frick collection, and lunch in the Russian Tea Room where, in 1976, Woody Allen was still a regular  presence. It was my first time in New York. Manhattan was magic.

Malcolm arrived next day. He had the good luck to know the purser on his flight, and was instantly upgraded to first-class, where he was plied with so much food and drink that when he disembarked he thought he had gone blind - in fact an eclipse of the sun had coincided precisely with his arrival. Then, in the evening, the orchestra strode triumphantly into the hotel on the edge of Central Park  after what had clearly been a successful tour of regional America. Carnegie Hall lay ahead, with the prospect of the premiere of an atmospheric new tone poem entitled Aurora by Iain Hamilton, starting in darkness and ending in a blaze of light  - just the sort of thing that had been missing from the earlier European tour. Alexander Gibson conducted a poetic account of Elgar’s Enigma Variations in the splendid hall’s warm acoustics. The concerto was Beethoven’s Emperor, expertly and robustly played by John Lill, replacing Iain Hamilton’s Violin Concerto which had been successfully presented earlier in the tour.

Next day came Washington, with a concert in the National Arts Centre, a pretentious edifice with a look about it of the architecture of Albert Speer. Compared with New York. Washington seemed  dull yet menacing. For supper in Georgetown we were advised to travel by taxi. Three buses - for which critics were not billed, as had happened after the European tour  - transported us back to Kennedy Airport in New York. Before leaving, I bought 1776, a complex American bicentenary board-game and challenging souvenir of the trip.  Gibson and his players would be back in New York a few years later, with a tired Claudio Arrau as soloist, and some sterling Sibelius to end the programme. But the first trip was the one I shall remember.
13 February 2015