Summer Serenade
12-14 June 2025
Summer Serenade
The Brechin concert is in association with
The Fochabers concert is in association with
Thursday 12 June, 7.30pm Brechin Cathedral
Friday 13 June, 7.30pm Fochabers Public Institute
Kindly supported by Eriadne & George Mackintosh, Claire & Anthony Tait and The Jones Family Charitable Trust
Both the Fochabers and Fortrose concerts are in association with
Saturday 14 June, 7.30pm Fortrose Academy Theatre
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Novelletten Op 52 Nos 1 and 3
PIAZZOLLA (arr DESYATNIKOV) The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Interval of 20 minutes
SIBELIUS Rakastava
DVOŘÁK Serenade
SCO String Ensemble
Stephanie Gonley Director / Violin
Stephanie Gonley
© Ryan Buchanan
THANK YOU
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Principal Second Violin
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Second Violin Rachel Smith
J Douglas Home
Principal Viola Max Mandel
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“A crack musical team at the top of its game.”
HM The King
Patron
Donald MacDonald CBE
Life President
Joanna Baker CBE
Chair
Gavin Reid LVO
Chief Executive
Maxim Emelyanychev
Principal Conductor
Andrew Manze
Principal Guest Conductor
Joseph Swensen
Conductor Emeritus
Gregory Batsleer
Chorus Director
Jay Capperauld
Associate Composer
Our
Musicians
YOUR ENSEMBLE TONIGHT
Information correct at the time of going to print
First Violin
Stephanie Gonley
Afonso Fesch
Ruth Crouch
Aisling O’Dea
Amira Bedrush-McDonald
Sarah Bevan Baker
Kristin Deeken
Kirsty Main
Second Violin
Marcus Barcham Stevens
Michelle Dierx
Rachel Smith
Stewart Webster
Abigail Young
Helena Rose
Viola
Francesca Gilbert
Joanna Patrick
Kay Stephen
Kathryn Jourdan
Cello
Philip Higham
Su-a Lee
Donald Gillan
Robert Anderson
Bass
Jamie Kenny
Margarida Castro
Percussion
Iain Sandilands
Marcus Barcham Stevens
Principal Second Violin
WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912)
Novelletten Op 52 Nos 1 and 3 (1912)
I Allegro Moderato
III Valse: Andante con moto
PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992)
The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (1965-69) arr. Desyatnikov (1996)
Verano Porteño (Buenos Aires Summer)
Otoño Porteño (Buenos Aires Autumn)
Invierno Porteño (Buenos Aires Winter)
Primavera Porteña (Buenos Aires Spring)
SIBELIUS (1809–1847)
Rakastava, Op 14 (1911-12)
Andante con moto
Allegretto
Andantino
DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op 22 (1875)
Moderato
Tempo di Valse – Trio (Allegro con moto)
Scherzo (Vivace)
Larghetto
Finale (Allegro vivace)
From captivating miniatures by a somewhat overlooked musician to distinctively Argentinian tango; from hushed contemplations of love to sunny Bohemian songs and dances – there’s no shortage of variety in tonight’s wideranging programme. What brings tonight’s four evocative pieces together, however, is a sense of joyful lyricism and beauty, in music expressly conceived to captivate, stimulate and entertain.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was just 27 when he completed his Four Novelletten – two of which open tonight’s concert – in 1902, though he would die only a decade later from pneumonia. Nonetheless, he was a widely celebrated figure in his lifetime. Born in London to an English mother and a father from Sierra Leone, he gained his unusual name because of his mother’s love for the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and entered the Royal College of Music at the age of just 15, where he studied composition under Stanford. He was greatly admired by Elgar and proclaimed a genius by August Jaeger (Elgar’s editor, immortalised as ‘Nimrod’ in Enigma Variations ). His huge trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha packed out the Royal Albert Hall for ten seasons in extravagant ballet versions conducted by Malcolm Sargent. That said, ColeridgeTaylor suffered from significant racial discrimination, and his music remained shockingly underappreciated after his death, until something of a rediscovery in recent years.
His Novelletten may have been inspired by Schumann’s piano miniatures of the same name, but were surely influenced, too, by Coleridge-Taylor’s own prowess as a concert violinist, which he puts to
good use in No 3. The pieces’ lyrical, somewhat sentimental style nonetheless conceals quite a remarkable exploration of the sonic possibilities of a string orchestra, to which Coleridge-Taylor adds a tambourine and triangle. These add greatly to the Spanish-sounding exoticism of No 1’s opening, before the music moves on to an elegant, soaring melody for violins, and a lighter central section with a flavour of Mendelssohn’s fairy music about it. Though titled ‘Valse’, No 3 feels a bit too slow to be danced to. It features a solo violin from the start, whose lofty melody slowly drifts back down to earth, and, following a livelier, brighter central section, returns to bring the piece to a wistful close.
After taking a prominent role in ColeridgeTaylor’s waltz, the violin steps out from the orchestra as a fully fledged soloist in tonight’s next piece. Astor Piazzolla
Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by Elgar and proclaimed a genius by August Jaeger (Elgar’s editor, immortalised as ‘Nimrod’ in EnigmaVariations).
was an Argentinian tango revolutionary, a composer, bandleader and virtuoso on the bandoneón (an Argentinian box concertina). He brought his country’s hallowed dance form firmly into the 20th century, mixing in influences from jazz and classical music in what he termed tango nuevo (or ‘new tango’), and outraging tango purists in the process. (The story goes that one of them pulled a gun on Piazzolla in the 1950s, demanding that he stop his heretical tamperings with the tango. Piazzolla, needless to say, took no notice.)
Though born in Buenos Aires, Piazzolla lived and worked right across the world, but it was only towards the end of his career that his music – sultry and sophisticated, but also complex and carefully crafted – became widely popular. His Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (or Cuatro estaciones porteñas
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
in the original Spanish) began life as four independent tango compositions. ‘Summer’ was originally incidental music to a 1965 play, while ‘Autumn’, ‘Winter’ and ‘Spring’ come from 1969. They were first conceived for Piazzolla’s tango quintet of violin, piano, electric guitar, double bass and bandoneón, and it was using those instruments that his Quinteto Nuevo Tango premiered the pieces at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Regina on 19 May 1970.
The version we’ll hear tonight dates from almost three decades later. In 1996, Ukrainian composer Leonid Desyatnikov received a request from eminent Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer to reimagine Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires for violin and strings – as a smoky, southern hemisphere counterpart, in fact, to the iconic Four Seasons that Antonio Vivaldi had composed almost
Though born in Buenos Aires, Piazzolla lived and worked right across the world, but it was only towards the end of his career that his music –sultry and sophisticated, but also complex and carefully crafted – became widely popular.
three centuries earlier. Desyatnikov approached the project with gusto, freely adapting and reworking Piazzolla’s music for these new forces, and even going so far as incorporating a few knowing nods to Vivaldi’s seasonal concertos in the process. (For anyone who knows their Vivaldi Four Seasons inside out: don’t be alarmed that Desyatnikov seems to have got his seasons muddled up. When it’s summer in Venice, it’s winter in Buenos Aires, and vice versa – and the same goes for spring and autumn. The Ukrainian composer is careful to reflect those seasonal oppositions in his Vivaldi quotations.)
Unlike Vivaldi’s better-known work, however, there’s little by way of specific pictorial reference in Piazzolla’s Seasons Instead, the pieces set out to capture the diversity and richness of the Argentinian capital in music that restlessly changes
Astor Piazzolla
Desyatnikov’s use of some distinctively 20th-century string techniques only adds to the music’s immediacy and vividness.
mood and perspective – and puts its violin soloist in intimate dialogue with some of their orchestral colleagues. And Desyatnikov’s use of some distinctively 20th-century string techniques only adds to the music’s immediacy and vividness.
There’s surely a sense of the bustle of life in the Argentine capital in the sultry harmonies and scurrying melodies of the opening ‘Verano porteño’ (‘Buenos Aires Summer’), with some last-minute Vivaldi references before its hard-edged conclusion. It’s followed by some rhythmic scratching from the soloist as ‘Otoño porteño’ (or ‘Buenos Aires Autumn’) gets underway, further establishing the music’s sense of bite. ‘Invierno porteño’ (‘Buenos Aires Winter’) begins quietly with just the orchestra’s lower strings, and a few Vivaldi quotations bring the movement to its gentle, musical box-like ending. Finally, an athletic violin solo quickly gathers a
web of counterpoint from its orchestral colleagues in ‘Primavera porteña’ (‘Buenos Aires Spring’).
From the heat of Buenos Aires, we travel northwards to the cool of Finland for tonight’s next piece – though there’s no shortage of warmth or passion, in fact, in Sibelius’s intimate Rakastava (‘The Lover’). The piece began life as a set of four songs for male chorus, based on Finnish folk poems selected from the Kanteletar collection amassed by linguist Elias Lönnrot in 1840. Sibelius wrote the songs in 1894 for a competition organised by Helsinki University. He only won second prize, but he clearly thought highly of the music he’d produced, later arranging it for men’s chorus and strings, then for mixed choir, and finally – 18 years later, in 1912 – reworking the music substantially in the wordless version for string orchestra we’ll hear this evening. It’s an unusually tender,
Leonid Desyatnikov
intimate piece in Sibelius’s output, certainly when set alongside the austere, somewhat granitic Fourth Symphony that he was composing at the same time. And it also shows a particularly elusive, suggestive side to his creativity, as though the moods he’s evoking are never entirely clear, and the stories he’s telling have a dreamlike fluidity.
The melancholy, elegiac opening movement, ‘The Beloved’, almost creeps in mid-phrase, with a sense of great yearning that remains unassuaged, and even its moments of joy seem to pass as quickly as they arrived. The brief central movement, ‘The Way of the Lover’, dashes past with unstoppable motion, and sounds like it’s more concerned with glistening texture and velocity than with traditional melody or harmony. Sibelius returns to the mood of the opening movement in the concluding ‘Good Night, My Beloved
It’s an unusually tender, intimate piece in Sibelius’ output, certainly when set ustere, somewhat gralongside the aanitic Fourth Symphony that he was composing at the same time.
– Farewell’, with a substantial violin solo based on a tenor line in the original choral version.
If Sibelius’ Rakastava (or at least its string orchestra version) had a gestation of almost 20 years, then tonight’s final piece was put together in less than two weeks – between 3 and 14 May 1875, to be precise. It was a time of enormous positivity and optimism for the 33-yearold Antonín Dvořák, however. He’d married his beloved Anna two years previously, and their first-born son, Otakar, had been born in 1874. The composer was gradually gaining recognition for his music, and enjoying important successes in the concert hall. More specifically, however, he’d just won the generous Austrian State Prize, designed to support exceptional but financially challenged artists, which enabled him to devote more time to composing – the fruits of which
Jean Sibelius
included his Fifth Symphony, and tonight’s Serenade for Strings.
It’s always questionable whether we can really line up a composer’s personal circumstances next to the mood and style of the music they create. Beethoven, for example, composed some of his most optimistic music, during the darkest periods of his life. But in the case of the Serenade for Strings, Dvořák’s happiness, optimism and joy can surely be felt written deeply into the music. It’s a piece, in fact, that seems deliberately designed to charm and entertain – but if that makes it sound shallow and lightweight, it’s anything but. Instead, it’s an immaculately crafted work that demonstrates Dvořák’s mastery of smaller-scale forms, and his innate ability for memorable melody and captivating harmony. Vienna Philharmonic violist Alois Alexander Buchta, a friend of Dvořák’s, suggested that the orchestra might
Dvořák’s happiness, optimism and joy can surely be felt written deeply into the music. It’s a piece, in fact, that seems deliberately designed to charm and entertain – but if that makes it sound shallow and lightweight, it’s anything but.
give the Serenade its premiere, but the idea was quietly dropped: Dvořák was considered far too low-key a figure for such an illustrious ensemble. In the end, the Serenade got its first performance on 10 December 1876 at Žofín Palace, Prague, where it went down a storm –and it’s remained a cherished part of orchestral programmes ever since.
Dvořák’s Serenade might not be quite as complex or sophisticated as his symphonies. After its energetic opening movement, the composer moves through a lilting waltz, a playful scherzo and a passionate slow movement. He can’t quite help himself injecting a little cleverness into his finale, however, a lively folk dance that brings the Serenade to an unexpectly earthy conclusion – and that also quotes from each of the preceding movements in the process.
© David Kettle
Antonín Leopold Dvořák
Director
/ Violin
Stephanie Gonley
Stephanie has a wide-ranging career as concerto soloist, soloist/director of chamber orchestras, recitalist and chamber musician. She has appeared as soloist with many of UK’s foremost orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia and BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Stephanie is leader of the English Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and has performed as Director/Soloist with both. She has also appeared as Director/Soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony, and the Oriol Ensemble Berlin to name but a few.
She has enjoyed overseas concerto performances with everyone from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Hannover Radio Symphony, to Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Norwegian Radio Symphony Orchestra, while her recordings include Dvorák Romance with the ECO and Sir Charles Mackerras for EMI, and the Sibelius Violin Concerto for BMG/ Conifer.
Stephanie is currently Professor of Violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. While herself a student at the Guildhall, she was a winner of the prestigious Shell-LSO National Scholarship.
© Ryan Buchanan
SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) is one of Scotland’s five National Performing Companies and has been a galvanizing force in Scotland’s music scene since its inception in 1974. The SCO believes that access to world-class music is not a luxury but something that everyone should have the opportunity to participate in, helping individuals and communities everywhere to thrive. Funded by the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and a community of philanthropic supporters, the SCO has an international reputation for exceptional, idiomatic performances: from mainstream classical music to newly commissioned works, each year its wide-ranging programme of work is presented across the length and breadth of Scotland, overseas and increasingly online.
Equally at home on and off the concert stage, each one of the SCO’s highly talented and creative musicians and staff is passionate about transforming and enhancing lives through the power of music. The SCO’s Creative Learning programme engages people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse range of projects, concerts, participatory workshops and resources. The SCO’s current five-year Residency in Edinburgh’s Craigmillar builds on the area’s extraordinary history of Community Arts, connecting the local community with a national cultural resource.
An exciting new chapter for the SCO began in September 2019 with the arrival of dynamic young conductor Maxim Emelyanychev as the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor. His tenure has recently been extended until 2028. The SCO and Emelyanychev released their first album together (Linn Records) in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim. Their second recording together, of Mendelssohn symphonies, was released in 2023, with Schubert Symphonies Nos 5 and 8 following in 2024.
The SCO also has long-standing associations with many eminent guest conductors and directors including Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze, Pekka Kuusisto, François Leleux, Nicola Benedetti, Isabelle van Keulen, Anthony Marwood, Richard Egarr, Mark Wigglesworth, Lorenza Borrani and Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen.
The Orchestra’s current Associate Composer is Jay Capperauld. The SCO enjoys close relationships with numerous leading composers and has commissioned around 200 new works, including pieces by Sir James MacMillan, Anna Clyne, Sally Beamish, Martin Suckling, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Karin Rehnqvist, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Nico Muhly and the late Peter Maxwell Davies.
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Su-a at the Kelpies in 2021