The two seasons

So which of the Edinburgh concert season grips you and to which, if either,  are you subscribing?   The Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s at the Usher Hall, with its emphasis, whenever possible, on what will sound good in these surroundings, or the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s, divided between the Usher Hall and Queen’s Hall, with programmes appropriate to each?

At one time the seasons were more clearly differentiated than they are now, with the SCO focusing on the territory - Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart -  to which it was better scaled than the RSNO. Gradually the RSNO, which was once by no means averse to performing Bach’s Brandenburg concertos or the St John Passion, retracted from the baroque and Haydn-Mozart repertoire.  Mahler, by then, was becoming the domain of big symphony orchestras,  and Schumann remained more their field of operation than that of the SCO. But now even this is changing. The SCO’s concerts are full of Schumann, and in the forthcoming season both orchestras are prominently featuring Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. It is a fascinating development, of a sort that shows how a small or smallish orchestra can be as  convincing in its playing of big symphonies as a “full” symphony orchestra.

Certainly the inroads an orchestra such as the SCO made an Brahms  have been startling - and a force, I would say, for the good, especially when the conductor has been of the calibre of Sir Charles Mackerras. Robin Ticciati’s Berlioz has been similarly revelatory. By reducing the old groundswell of cellos and double basses, such conductors have turned such composers into a different experience.

But what about Mahler? Will Robin Ticciati’s conducting of the SCO in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in the Usher Hall on October 9 prove more rewarding than Sir Andrew Davis’s with the RSNO in the same surroundings on May 8, or sound disappointingly underweight?

Will the sudden great celestial   explosion in the slow movement  sound bigger and better when delivered by the RSNO than by the lighter-toned SCO? Theoretically it is bound to, but who can say?

And what, in that case, will happen to the finale? Will it sound like fine chamber music - as we can expect to happen in Ticciati’s performance with the SCO -  or will it sound merely listless, as sometimes happens even in weightier performances?

Far from treading on each other’s toes, the two performances could be just what we need in a single season, and there are good reasons for attending both of them.  They will certainly teach you more about the music, about how it can - or indeed should - sound. So which concert season is the one to book for? Ideally, I would dip. But it is a subject to which I shall be returning.
8 September  2010