Critical acclaim for Bamberger Symphoniker and Jonathan Nott's closing Edinburgh concerts

8 September 2011

The Bamberger Symphoniker and Jonathan Nott brought this year's Edinburgh International Festival to a close with a three-concert residency. Opening with a late night concert conducted by the young Latvian, Ainars Rubikis, winner of Bamberg's Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in 2010, they performed an arrangement for 12 musicians and soprano of Mahler's Symphony No. 4.  In the final two concerts Jonathan Nott was joined by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. In the first programme, Messiaen's Chronochromie and Sept Haikai were set alongside Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin in its complete version and in the second, they focussed exclusively on the works of Maurice Ravel, with his Vales Nobles et Sentimentales, the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and the complete suite of Daphnis et Chloe in which they were joined by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

In a review of the performance, The Times commented: “The vivid colours of Bartók’s miraculous orchestration popped off the stage, the intensity driven from the first note, fleshing out Bartók’s busy street scene in a cacophony of lurid strings and brass, climaxing in a brief sigh of ecstasy from an Edinburgh Festival Chorus who had clearly been metaphorically unbuttoned by their chorus master Christopher Bell. And if there was not quite enough sleaze in the prostitute’s clarinet, the narrative was convincingly drawn, with a chase scene that in its relentless pump oddly recalled the clockwork inevitability of Nott’s take on Messiaen’s weighty Chronochromie earlier in the evening...This was music of the head, intelligently thought through and virtuosically realised”. The Scottish Herald gave its own high praise: “What Jonathan Nott and his dedicated Bambergers delivered on Saturday was very special.”