Classical: A season to be cheerful By Ken Walton Published on Thursday 22 March 2012 13:37 It may have been a case of information overload, but one thing is clear - Scotland's main orchestras are offering an embarrassment of riches IT HAS never happened before, but all three of Scotland's main orchestras - the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - unleashed a deluge of information this week by announcing their new 2012-13 seasons on exactly the same day. It was, they all claim, unintentional, and was determined by the fact that this was the one week their respective principal conductors - Peter Oundjian (RSNO), Donald Runnicles (SSO) and Robin Ticciati (SCO) - were in town to front the launches. What it means for the rest of us is that music lovers can sit down this weekend and ponder a daunting array of main season concerts, ranging from an astonishing choice of around 50 orchestral programmes in Glasgow and around 35 in Edinburgh, to the proportionally smaller series that take place in the likes of Aberdeen, Inverness and Perth. So what are the nuggets worth gleaning, other than such obvious attractions as: Oundjian's first official season in charge of the RSNO, conducting seven full programmes; Runnicles" much-anticipated serialised presentation of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (outlined a fortnight ago in these pages when the SSO cunningly pre-empted the Edinburgh International Festival's announcement that the same opera would feature in its programme only weeks before the SSO's); or the crowning of Ticciati's ongoing Berlioz journey with a performance of Harold in Italy? So far as the RSNO is concerned, Oundjian's appearances are worth their weight in gold. He opens the season with a virile Russian cocktail - Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto featuring crack violinist Vadim Gluzman. But look out too for his take on Orff's ever-popular Carmina Burana, Smetana's complete Ma Vlast (with specially commissioned visuals by photo-artist James Westwater), and a potentially fascinating two-part American Festival, featuring the familiar music of Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin and Adams, as well as a welcome return to Scotland by pianist Jon Kimura Parker. Other guest conductors include Neeme Järvi (Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony), Sir Andrew Davis (Mendelssohn's Elijah) and Thomas Søndergård, who is joined by cellist Truls Mørk in Dvorak's Cello Concerto. The season ends with a celebrity appearance by Nicola Benedetti, playing, it has to be said, predictable party pieces - Vaughan Williams" The Lark Ascending and Saint-Saëns" Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso - and no doubt filling the halls as usual. The matter of filling seats remains a major concern for all of the orchestras as they face continuing curbs on funding, but RSNO chief executive Michael Elliott was delighted this week to reveal that average box offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh are sitting at 80 per cent, that the number of subscribers in Glasgow has doubled in recent years (also up ten per cent in Aberdeen), and that "11 per cent of RSNO concert goers are now 25 following the success of the RSNO's under-26 scheme." Surprise, surprise - the SSO has also booked Benedetti, and director Gavin Reid fully expects the popularity of that concert to reflect the 12 per cent attendance increase his orchestra witnessed last year in its now well-established Thursday night series in Glasgow's City Halls. Benedetti appears in November, again with trademark repertoire - Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No 1 - which she will have played a few months previously with the London Symphony Orchestra in her Edinburgh Festival debut. The main highlights of the SSO season, besides marking Wagner's centenary year with Tristan, are inspirational and ambitious. Benedetti's Szymanowski forms part of a broader series, Muzyka Polska, celebrating the music of Poland, with performances of Penderecki's Polymorphia, and Lutoslawski's wonderful Concerto for Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov, as well as bits of Chopin. Principal guest conductor Andrew Manze continues his exploration of the Vaughan Williams symphonies; pianist Steven Osborne plays Beethoven's last two piano concertos in separate concerts; the brilliant Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin returns after his complete Prokofiev cycle with the headier Romanticism of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 3; and the season ends with a new work by associate artist Matthias Pintscher, who also conducts Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring 100 years after it incited the famous Paris riot. Don't underestimate the more diminutive SCO. True to form, it defies its "chamber" proportions with an operatic season-opener every bit as extravagant and mouth-watering as the SSO's Wagner. Just as he did last season with Don Giovanni, Ticciati - now also the newly-elected music director of Glyndebourne Opera - conducts a concert performance of Mozart's Così fan tutte, with a star-studded cast that includes Sally Matthews, Maximillian Schmitt and Christopher Maltman. Vienna is the focus of two of Ticciati's concerts in March, when he is joined by baritone Matthais Goerne in a selection of Schubert songs orchestrated by Webern, Brahms and Reger, and by mezzo soprano Karen Cargill and tenor Toby Spence in Mahler's exquisite Das Lied von der Erde. Ticciati oversees six programmes in all this coming season, including appearances with legendary pianist Maria João Pires (with whom he and the orchestra tour Europe), and violinist Veronika Eberle in Schumann's Violin Concerto. New music features significantly in the SCO season, including the Scottish premiere of James MacMillan's Oboe Concerto, and the world premiere of Lyell Cresswell's Triple Concerto, played by the Swiss Piano Trio. Among the array of major guest artists are cellist Ralph Kirshbaum (Barber concerto), Artur Pizarro in Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto, and more spontaneous Mozart from the idiosyncratic pianist/conductor Robert Levin. The SCO celebrates the centenary of Britten's birth in two Britten 100 concerts in April: one conducted by Richard Egarr exploring the retro-link with Purcell; the other, more forward looking, in which George Benjamin balances music by Harrison Birtwistle and Martin Suckling with Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. In Aberdeen, the SCO and RSNO continue to jointly market their seasons as one, an initiative that SCO managing director Roy McEwan claims "has resulted in increased subscriptions all round." Nonetheless, this week's simultaneous launches are not a conscious collaboration, and none of the orchestral bosses, I suspect, is over the moon about it. For the punter, though, it's an embarrassment of riches that offers endless and flexible choice. Full programme and booking information for the 2012-13 orchestra seasons are now available. For the RSNO, see www.rsno.org.uk; for the BBC SSO, www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/bbcsso; for the SCO, www.sco.org.uk