I am looking at an illustration by Leonard Lesley Brooke in a book of Nonsense Songs by Edward Lear that has haunted me from childhood. Strange and a bit scary, it is a full colour plate of The Dong With a Luminous Nose forever wandering the Bong-tree forests seeking his Jumbly Girl. His long woven nose has a light at the end and he plays a thin mournful tune on a reedy pipe “with silvery squeaks” as he goes. London based Russian composer Elena Langer was struck by the parallels of her homeland’s traditional tales, many of which are absurd and tragic, to Lear’s poem. Langer’s work, receiving its Scottish premiere, is a mix of cantata with a cello concerto, the cellist being the Dong’s soul. Using choir and youth choir choral forces required for Carmina Burana (they like to keep their choruses busy at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra), it was a perfect opener to this sold out concert.
RSNO principal cellist Pei-Jee Ng assembled bleak musical fragments into a beautiful solo introduction before chorus and orchestra depicted the wild Gromboolian Plain, part of Lear’s fantastical landscape. Making her first appearance with the orchestra, conductor Marzena Diakun guided the forces expertly with precise calm movement, sustaining excellence from her singers, and controlling the orchestral tumult complete with coppery gong as The Jumblies set sail homewards in their sieve. Ng’s cello perfectly described the love-sick Dong, the music turning ethereal with interjections from a muted trombone before moving on to a lively waltz as the Dong wove his nose from Twangum Tree bark. With large orchestral forces and Lear’s dense text, not all the words were clear, though the RSNO Juniors were pinpoint sharp, singing from memory. The Dong with a Luminous Nose is a thoughtful work perfectly capturing despair of a lost love lurking behind the jovial Jumbly nonsense.
Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana packs out venues demonstrating the fun to be had from bawdy ancient texts, but this magnificent performance showed that there were new things to discover. We travel the full circle of the Wheel of Fortune, from springtime on the green and through the tavern to the court of love, Orff mixing musical styles with imaginative orchestration and earworm time signatures, moving from plainchant, rustic dance, to romantic Italianate, often using repeated verse for effect. A fresh set of younger RSNO singers took their seats behind the orchestra and in front of the main RSNO chorus, some so young that their feet did not quite reach the floor.
Diakun set a vigorous tone with the famous opening, the chorus robust, gutsy and rude, for fate and fortune is a serious business. It was fascinating to watch Diakun getting detail from her forces with sometimes minimal gesture, at times marking the beat with the baton in her right hand, the left at her face emphasising diction. Orff does not make things easy for his soloists; Adrian Dwyer’s characterful tenor as the blackened roasted swan was a torturous delight. Fflur Wyn’s mellow soprano was perfect for the Court of Love duties, stratospheric in “Dulcissime”. Ben McAteer’s gorgeously full baritone alternated with falsetto in the tricky “Dies nox et omnia” and he was a wonderfully entertaining abbott who had clearly discovered the Jumblies’ stash of Ring-bo-Ree. Diakun drew stunning light and shade contrasts and it was thrilling to watch her players throw themselves into this electrifying piece. The RSNO chorus kept the momentum going splendidly, the youngsters perfectly focussed in the “tortus floreo” accelerandos. “Blanziflor et Helena” raised the roof, before the junior chorus joined in the final exhilarating spin of Fortune’s wheel.
