Not a single word is spoken all night, and yet you leave with the feeling that a lot was said
You’re invited to a concert. Classical music. While not your typical fare, you look forward to it. You’re excited, even. So you arrive early at Glasgow’s City Halls, a venue steeped in history and tonight playing host to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a performing arts company that formed over a century after the grand hall was originally built. Three pieces will be played, one a world premiere and the others well-loved classics. The lights dim and a group of musicians, all dressed in the standard black, appear on stage and take their seats. They get ready. A shroud of silence settles over the audience. Are they getting ready too? There’s always an air of anticipation right before the first notes are played, an electric feeling that is seeking a channel to spark the night alive. The musicians raise their instruments to their lips. And into that silence – noise.
Noise. It hasn’t come from the stage. No, it has come from the audience. Someone’s phone. Someone has forgotten to switch off their phone and you are sat there smugly because you always put your phone on silent before any event. But instead of the killing their phone immediately, the noise has kept blaring on, and you have now twisted around to locate the commotion. It was then you realised it wasn’t just some phone ringing – it was an audience member seemingly watching TikToks on full volume.
It is a regrettable way to begin a review. I must apologise as this disruption is in no way a reflection on the performance; in fact, the performance was equal parts virtuosic and moving. But it is also a regrettable way to begin an otherwise excellent evening. So, a plea from your humble reviewer: turn off your damn phones. And if you must blast TikToks out loud, the comfort of your own home is a much better locale than you can imagine.
Away from modern distractions, the evening is kickstarted by the premiere of Jay Capperauld’s Carmina Gadelica. Inspired by Alexander Carmichael’s collection of ancient Scottish folk poetry, this piece is performed in five movements by a wind dectet that evokes the natural world that Scotland boasts, from the fluidity of the waters to the song of the birds. The highlight, however, is the third movement, a musical recreation of songs sung by women who worked on cloth, where a steady beat drives forward a sense of anticipation.
You are then taken back in time to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K364. Written in a deeply unhappy time of his life, it begins with a vigorous first movement that has an almost mischievous edge. Here, the winds take on a supporting role as the strings come out to play, but it’s the second movement that grabs you and holds on to you. Led by the wonderful Stephanie Gonley on violin and Max Mandel on viola, it is wistful, and demands you introspect. When it ends with a sense of finality, you come away having touched on emotional truths within.
The final piece of the night is Franz Schubert’s Symphony No 4 in C minor, D 417. Titled ‘Tragic’, it’s a dramatic piece. Again, the second movement conveys the melancholy, and the orchestra plays it with a touch of the Romantic, every note like a stroke of a painting. Such strong emotion is mirrored in a happier mood in the final movement, and the orchestra once more matches it with gusto, playing it with a force that literally shakes your boots. It is a triumphant end to the symphony, and a fitting one for the evening.