CHOOSING the top 20 classical and opera performances of all time in Scotland was never going to be easy, nor necessarily conclusive. The legacy lies in the individual memory, or someone else's memory etched in writing.
The task was not to adjudge a piece of music, but to assess the quality of a performance together with the significance and context of its presentation. Here was an opportunity to consider the furthest-reaching moments in Scottish musical history.
So where did we begin? By calling in a panel with a collective musical memory of almost 200 years: Conrad Wilson was staff music critic of the Scotsman for 27 years, and has attended every Edinburgh Festival since it began; John Currie directed all of Scotland's major choruses, working with all the great conductors in the process; Hugh Macdonald is a former head of music at BBC Scotland and ex-director of the BBC SSO. I am indebted to them all.
Obviously, the history of classical music in Scotland is not just restricted to the Central Belt, and ideally we would have liked to end up with a list that reflected this. Much as we tried, however, the final choice inevitably hinges around performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with notable exceptions.
It struck us, too, that so few of our choices come from recent years.
Why, for instance, was there no place for any James MacMillan premieres?
Quite simply, this is because the most important of those - for example, the tumultuous 1990 London Proms premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie - happened south of the border. This list, on the other hand, is only about notable performances that shook Scotland.
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Norman's visit was a catalyst for Glasgow's meteoric rise
JESSYE NORMAN, GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL, 14 NOVEMBER 1990
WHAT was more important? The fact that Glasgow had finally built a new concert hall 28 years after the old St Andrews Hall had burnt down? That the city was celebrating its only possible answer to the Edinburgh Festival - a gloriously overindulgent year as 1990 European City of Culture? Or the fact that both these occurrences, and an artificially inflated budget, had helped it attract such performing legends as Jessye Norman?
When she came, a month after the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall opened, the voice may not have been what is was, but her iconic presence was talked about before and after as a symbol of Glasgow's meteoric cultural ascendancy. She sang Strauss (the final scene from Salomé) and other signature arias.
The orchestra was the BBC SSO under Sir Alexander Gibson but, in truth, it was the whole package that signalled a very special moment in recent musical history.
It was that moment in time when Glasgow established a blueprint that was to reshape its future musical profile - leading to a venue-led strategy that now encompasses its highly successful International Series, a full and comprehensive orchestral programme, and the more recent refurbishment of the City Halls.
KENNETH WALTON
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22||An exciting new partnership
BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/OSMO VÄNSKÄ CITY HALLS, GLASGOW, 1 MAY 1997
THE audience that filed out of Glasgow's City Halls on the night of 1 May 1997 was buzzing with rumours of a huge Labour landslide in that day's general election. In his review of the concert, Scotsman music critic Stephen Johnson wrote about hearing the strains of "No more Tories in Scotland" sung to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory by a group of slightly inebriated youths as he walked home across Kelvin Bridge. But the City Halls audience had more than political upheaval on their minds. They had just heard an astonishingly original and powerful interpretation of Sibelius's great Fifth Symphony played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (SSO) under its recently appointed Finnish Chief Conductor Osmo Vänskä. Vänskä had arrived in Scotland almost unknown outside Scandinavia, though some revelatory, tradition-challenging recordings of Sibelius that he had made with his orchestra in Lahti had begun to attract international attention.
Vänskä's calling card in his first Scottish season was a complete survey of the great Finn's symphonies, The Sibelius Experience. By this penultimate concert in the series his performances with the BBC SSO were pulling in big crowds and establishing what would come to be seen as one of the most exciting musical partnerships in Britain.
HUGH MACDONALD
18
Kleiber goes home early
BERG'S WOZZECK, KING'S THEATRE, EDINBURGH, AUGUST 1966
IN VISUAL terms, Stuttgart Opera's Wozzeck was nothing special, and no match for Alban Berg's other opera, Lulu, ten days later. Nor was it a British premiere, like the Glyndebourne Rake's Progress at the King's Theatre in 1953.
But the production had one feature that put it in a class of its own; it was conducted by the young Carlos Kleiber, and its opening night displayed all the qualities - the rhythmic precision, the impeccable phrasing, the keen dramatic perception - for which he became renowned.
It also displayed one other quality: his temperament. If anything or anybody threatened his perfectionism, he booked the next flight out. In Edinburgh, after a first night that turned out to be a last night, he flew secretly from Turnhouse.
The production, after its launch in Germany, had displeased him. Two of the main singers were having an affair, which was enough to distract him. It was time to go. The audience, waiting for the curtain to rise on the second of three performances, were told the show was cancelled.
Kleiber soon resigned from Stuttgart and thereafter operated freelance. When he died in 2004 he was rated the finest conductor in the world, but had never appeared in Edinburgh again.
CONRAD WILSON
17
Abbado's glorious return to nation's capital
PARSIFAL, EDINBURGH FESTIVAL THEATRE, 12 AUGUST 2003
CLAUDIO Abbado's visionary performance of Wagner's Parsifal might have remained memorable enough for the simple fact it was the first Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) event to feature a £100 ticket. But it was much more than that. Beyond even its remarkable artistic strength, this performance was a summation of a number of significant achievements in Scottish musical life.
Peter Stein's production underlined the huge success of the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, the final solution to generations of political bickering and parsimonious wailing about an opera house for Scotland's capital. Edinburgh's notorious "hole in the ground" was blotted from memory (almost) and many performances leading up to this one had now proved the Festival Theatre's brilliance and charm. More significantly, the production was one of the happiest of refurbished imports in a long EIF tradition, and certainly a jewel in the crown of Brian McMaster's years as festival director.
The original Salzburg production, hailed as a resounding success earlier that year, was now graced by a clutch of distinguished choruses including the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, The Prague Philharmonic, and solo boys from the Tolzer Knabenchor.
The cast was topped by a faultless Gurnemanz (Hans Tschammer) and a splendid Kundry (Violeta Urmana). The orchestra was the astonishing Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester - one of several international youth orchestras set up by the former Berlin Philharmonic conductor - which Abbado had already introduced to earlier festivals. Many of its youngsters were playing this Wagner opera for the first time.
Above all, the production marked the return of Claudio Abbado to Edinburgh. His contributions in earlier years (particularly in the Peter Diamand and John Drummond eras) had been landmarks. After his illness, the question was, 'Would we ever see him here again?' Thankfully, the answer was 'yes'.
JOHN CURRIE
DO YOU AGREE?
WHATEVER you think of our choices - and our omissions - we'd love to hear your views. Please get in touch with us, either by post or on the web at www.scotsman.com/top20.
