Travels with an orchestra

As time passed, foreign touring with Scottish orchestras became more and more a part of my job as music critic of The Scotsman. But while chronicling these adventures was seldom less than pleasant, it became - at least for me - less and less important, more a matter of travel writing than genuine  musical criticism. 

Invitations flowed in, either to be accepted or rejected. The fact that they invariably covered my flight and hotel expenses was welcome, especially as I knew I could write whatever I liked, but boring offers - of standard programmes in places I had visited before - became easy to resist.

Yet there were always side benefits - familiar music in unfamiliar places, long dialogues with players who had bcome friends, the opportunity to meet interesting conductors and soloists - which provided unexpected topics to write about. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as I had 
discovered, were the nicest people to travel with. Their early trips to Eastern Europe and the United States led to other shared adventures - an annual residency at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, ever one of the best European festivals to write about, a week in Barcelona, trips to Hong Kong and Japan. 

Barcelona, well before the Olympics, was still its true self. The Palace of Music, where the SCO was teamed with Sir Chalres Mackerras and the Philharmonia Chorus in performances of Haydn’s Creation and Mozart’s German  version of Messiah, was an art nouveau extravaganza befitting the city of Gaudi architecture. Sitting there each morning during rehearsals, I could do nothing but gaze and marvel at the design while listening to Sir Charles’s steady clarifying of the musical detail. 

During time off there was much to see, including  the peageful little Picasso Museum, and much to eat in  an enticing but no-longer-existent seafood shack on the waterfront, serving bowls of shellfish zarzuela with carafes of local wine. At the final rehearsal the administrator Michael Storrs seized his chance to berate the orchestra for slovenly playing, warning them that if they did  not improve and sit up straight  they would not be coming back. Later, during the introduction to The Creation, in front of a packed house, the difference was startling.

But it was Aix en Provence which, for a while, was the mosr idyllic date in the orchestra’s - and my - summer schedule. With Scottish Opera on stage, and the SCO in support, Mackerras conducted Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and choral music by the same composer. Raymond Leppard followed with a seductive black-and-white treatment of Handel’s Alcina with Teresa Berganza, a knight in black leather, slowly traversing the entire widith of the stage, first forwards, then backwards. On other days Roderick Brydon conducted Mozart and Dvorak  wind serenades beside a small plashing fountain.  Towards midnight, in one or another of the local bistros, Leppard  or Mackerras could be encountered dining with their retinues, while up on the square, beneath the stars, the great Ray Charles played and swayed.
2 April 2015