Page 198 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

The earlier concert, by the SSO under Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro, was of
music first heard in California – in the case of the opening work, A Scotch Bestiary,
played by this year’s first Festival guests the LA Phil to hansel their new Frank

Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.

That detail is far from incidental in an organ concerto that owes a debt to the cartoon-
soundtracking music of Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott. Constructed in the manner
of Mussorgsky’s stroll round a picture gallery, that work’s Promenade here becomes

the turning of a page, signalled by a recurring tune that begins on the trombones (who
had a busy time of it on both works) and has its most beguiling expression in a later
version for harp, percussion and electric piano. The characters on those pages begin in

the animal world, but, after Uncle Tom Cat and His Chickens, take satirical human
form in sound pictures of Scottish Patriots and then The Reverend Cuckoo and his
Parroting Chorus, both far from reverential to the composer’s homeland. This kitsch

circus music is a side of MacMillan that may surprise, and perhaps even offend, a few
people, and it was played with real vigour by the SSO with Stephen Farr finding some
great effects on the Usher Hall organ.

Woman of the Apocalyse, premiered in Santa Cruz by Marin Alsop in 2012, is another
brilliant showpiece for orchestra, beginning in very gentle sensuous mode on strings
and percussion, and building over half an hour to a finale as grand as the opening and

closing of the Bestiary. Again pictorial in inspiration, and quite filmic at points, it is
often what is going on behind the themes on the surface that is most fascinating. When
the violas have a simple outline, the winds, percussion and other strings are filling the

background with colour, and a later feature for string quartet, perhaps the most
spiritual section of the work, is as fascinating in its underscore as the busy writing for
the soloists.

The Symphony No 2, with which the SCO began their concert in the same space two

hours later, was the exception in an evening of premieres. Written for (and recorded
by) the orchestra and first heard on the composer’s home turf in Ayr Town Hall in
1999, it was the only piece conducted by MacMillan himself. Many of the MacMillan

ingredients heard in the more recent music were already present here, like the
combination of cor anglais and violas, and the fondness for militaristic marches and

fanfares. With both orchestras featuring a fair number of guest musicians in key roles,
it was particularly apt to have Ursula Leveaux back in the principal bassoon chair

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