Page 205 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

20 August 2019
SCO/Christophers review – premiere of

James MacMillan's ecstatic Fifth

Symphony

****

Usher Hall, Edinburgh
The latest symphony from the pre-eminent Scottish composer, a meditation on the Holy Spirit
featuring a striking 20-voice motet, received a rapturous response

Rowena Smith

Rapturous reception ... Harry Christophers conducting The Sixteen and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Photograph: Ryan Buchanan Photography

Scotland’s pre-eminent composer, Sir James MacMillan, turns 60 this year, a landmark celebrated
by the Edinburgh international festival with a series of concerts culminating in the premiere of a
major new work: his Fifth Symphony.

It is three decades since the composer burst onto the British music scene with the premiere of his
searing, visceral Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the BBC Proms. In that time, his work has
undergone a major stylistic evolution.

MacMillan’s faith may still be the heart and centre of everything he writes, but the angry, young
firebrand has been replaced by a composer who seems equally keen to explore the more ecstatic
aspects of Catholic theology alongside penitence and pain.

These contrasts of past and present were brought into focus in this birthday concert. In the first
half MacMillan himself conducted his Second Symphony, written for the SCO 20 years ago: a dark,
deeply disquieting work that seems to pose more questions than it answers, from the tolling bells
at its opening to the fragment of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde that emerge towards its close. It’s a
piece that bears little relation to MacMillan’s new Fifth Symphony, a choral work commissioned by
the Genesis Foundation for Harry Christophers and The Sixteen and premiered by both choirs
alongside the SCO with Christophers at the helm.

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