David Smythe

Perth

Farming, tourism, agritourism & rural economy. Arts enthusiast. Bachtrack reviewer. Stays for film credits and organ voluntaries.

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Articles

Epic Shostakovich rounds off the Royal Scottish National season

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra ended their season with ‘Spectacular Shostakovich’ in a thrilling performance more than matching the billing. Programming a single composer allowed a deeper dive below the music into hidden agendas.
ORA Singers contrast Ancient and Modern at the Perth Festival

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Perth’s historic St John’s Kirk’s warm spacious acoustic, which keeps sound focused yet lets high voices soar to the rafters, is a wonderfully atmospheric building to hear sacred music. This is where John Knox lit the touch paper sparking the Scottish reformation in May 1559, which made a programme headlined by music from the Sistine Chapel into something deliciously subversive.
Lampooning the law: Scottish Opera’s satirical new double bill

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury is a brief work demanding a companion piece. Scottish Opera’s response was to commission a new opera from Toby Hession, A Matter of Misconduct! fitting the bill perfectly, its world premiere a sparkling modern riposte to the dusty Victorian courtroom satire. Lifting the lid in the Downing Street Press Room as a political storm rages, a cast of characters we all know too well provides delicious enjoyment.
Scottish Opera’s Merry Widow tangles with the New York Mafia

1 month ago | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Director John Savournin’s rule for updating opera is that it “must add something worth adding”. Happily, relocating The Merry Widow from the Parisian glamour at the turn of the last century, Savournin finds accurate parallels with 1950s New York mafia featuring the Boss, the Family and the Mob.
Hands up for Uprising, Jonathan Dove’s vivid new community opera

Mar 29, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Greta Thunberg must have been on the mind of Jonathan Dove when terminally ill opera philanthropist Jim Potter approached him in 2020 with the idea of commissioning a community opera about sustainability involving youngsters. The resulting Uprising sees 15-year old Lola Green throwing her family into turmoil as an ancient forest is threatened. Dove uses a vibrant community of singers in an energetic and moving protest drama as floods arrive, the earth warming alarmingly.
Pekka Kuusisto and Simon Crawford-Phillips bring New Dimensions to SCO

Mar 15, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Pekka Kuusisto’s visits to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are keenly anticipated, his highly charged musical spark making the bold “New Dimensions” programming vivid and compelling. Works from three living composers were bookended by a rare and early Britten piece and, in a musical arc reaching back through the centuries, a lively Haydn symphony.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra perform moving Fauré

Feb 28, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Fauré wrote that his Requiem was “from beginning to end, a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest”. The work’s consoling spirituality is popular, drawing the listeners in, leaving them in a personal deeper peace. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and SCO Chorus wisely left the transcendent to the end in a concert of English music bookended by French. Berlioz looked to Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing for an opera project resulting in the two-act comedy Béatrice et Bénédict.
Ghosts and coal: MacMillan conducts the BBC Scottish SO

Feb 23, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra brought a concert of two distinct halves to Perth Concert Hall, familiar Vaughan Williams and Mendelssohn pieces contrasting alongside new music. Sir James MacMillan’s Cumnock Tryst Festival in Ayrshire nurtures and encourages new composers.
A sparky L’infedeltà delusa at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Jan 27, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Given that he was in charge of Prince Esterházy’s opera troupe staging 150 performances a year, it is extraordinary that Joseph Haydn, Esterházy’s Kapellmeister, is not better remembered for his numerous operas. L’infedeltà delusa, a comedic burletta per musica, was composed for the Dowager Princess Esterházy’s name day, the characters in Marco Coltellini’s tale perhaps inspired not by the Hungarian nobility, but those working downstairs and on the estate.
Tremendous Sibelius from Geneva Lewis and the SCO

Jan 17, 2025 | bachtrack.com | David Smythe

Conductor Joseph Swensen expressed his delight in programming this Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert mainly devoted to Sibelius’ more soul-searching introspective music, the very personal Violin Concerto and his rather melancholic Sixth Symphony.To temper possible gloom following us out of the doors of Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, Swensen promised to tack on a “less sad” short piece at the end.