Latest news with #Capperauld
The Herald Scotland
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Frankenstein faces the music on new Youth Orchestra tour
(Image: Jay Capperauld) NYOS, Scotland's national youth orchestra, is made up of 100 of Scotland's most prolific young musicians aged 14 to 22. This summer the orchestra will undertake its first international tour since 2015 visiting Perth, Liverpool and Saffron Walden before travelling to Berlin to represent Scotland at the Young Euro Classic festival. They will present a macabre and fantastical programme featuring the new Capperauld piece alongside work by Anna Clyne and Berlioz. (Image: NYOS) Capperauld's commission is the latest in a succession, all sharing a gothic sensibility, by the young composer, a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, who has, for the last decade, been himself 'galvanising' the world of classical music with his virtuoso compositions. What adds a fresh dimension to his latest piece is that the soloist will be Ryan Corbett, a BBC New Generation artist, who plays the accordion. (Image: Ryan Corbett) Capperauld, who is the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Associate Composer and who was commissioned by His Majesty King Charles III to produce a new work for the Honours of Scotland Ceremony, says: "The accordion can be a deceptively difficult instrument to compose for because it is essentially a mini orchestra within itself. This offers huge scope and sonic options, but also makes it hard to pin the instrument down with compositional rules. 'I collaborated with Ryan Corbett throughout the process, trying out bits of material so that his identity as a performer is imprinted onto the piece, and I am also excited to be working with the young musicians of NYOS in bringing this musical monster to life. The young players are always so enthusiastic and genuinely interested in exploring new music with a fresh sense of curiosity.' Ryan, who has been hailed by composer Sir James McMillan as 'one of the most astonishing and surprising newcomers in Scottish music', who has won a string of accolades for his playing since being introduced to the accordion at the age of 11. The new work that he will be playing for the NYOS will have its world premiere in Perth Concert Hall on Friday, 1 August, followed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and the Saffron Hall in Essex, before making its international debut in Berlin, on 6 August. Tickets for the tour are on sale now. (Image: NYOS) The concerto, which was commissioned with support from The Richard Chester Creativity Fund, is written in one continuous movement that reimagines the Frankenstein story in a set of infernal dances through the nightmarish image of a chorus line of dancing dead frogs' legs. The accordion is shocked into animation by orchestral jolts, which set in motion an unfolding narrative of high-drama and macabre, tongue-in-cheek humour, with references to various musical dance forms, such as the tango, waltz, jig and tarantella. This is a challenging score for young musicians, but the orchestra has been likened by critics as 'hard-worn professionals' and is more than ready to thrill audiences with its performance. (Image: NYOS) The vision of NYOS is to provide access to world-class ensemble music-making for all communities in Scotland, and the organisation works with young musicians between the ages of eight and 25, providing music-making opportunities, inspirational orchestral experiences and advanced artistic and career skills development. Kirsteen Davidson-Kelly, CEO and Artistic Director of NYOS, said: 'This summer marks the first time since 2016 that the NYOS orchestra has performed outside Scotland, and the first time since our 2015 China tour that we have toured abroad. "We are looking forward to sharing this electrifying programme with audiences at home and further afield, offering our young people the chance to represent Scotland on the world stage.' The NYOS musicians are looking forward to performing at the festival in Berlin and sharing the new Capperauld concerto with audiences. (Image: NYOS) Aiden Macdonald, NYOS' principal viola, says: 'I have never been to Germany, so getting to perform there is an incredibly exciting opportunity. I love playing in this orchestra and I know that taking it abroad and performing the new commission will be an amazing experience for all of us.' Full details of the NYOS programme are available from
The Herald Scotland
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A composer whose remarkable works are very much his own
City Halls, Glasgow Keith Bruce four stars AYRSHIRE composer Jay Capperauld may be at the start of his career, but he is already as old as Mozart was when he died and rather older than Schubert, which put an interesting perspective on a concert which featured a world premiere alongside two youthful works from earlier times. Capperauld is currently producing a remarkable sequence of works for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as its Associate Composer, and Carmina Gadelica, a five-movement suite commissioned by the SCO with the support of the Vaughan Williams Foundation, was another demonstration of his range. Written for a wind dectet – pairs of clarinets, bassoons, horns, oboes and flutes (one crucially doubling on piccolo) – it achieves a wide palette of sonic colour over its 20 minutes, the players adding some foot-stomping to the mix at the start and sounding uncannily like the pipes playing a reel at the end. Read More Things to do in Scotland this month, from gigs to book festivals The new guide to Glasgow's musical heroes and trailblazers Drama and excitement as guest conductor takes up the baton at BBC SSO There are some obvious influences to Capperauld's approach – mentor Sir James MacMillan, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sally Beamish among them – but the result is very much his own. The vernacular of unaccompanied Gaelic Psalm singing and the work rhythms of the Waulking Songs of the Western Isles have inspired others, but Capperauld finds a kinship with New York minimalism in the former and builds a fascinating complexity on the framework of the latter. In the lament of the fourth movement and dance of the finale he has also written some of his most approachable music and this piece is surely likely to find other eager champions. Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, a double concerto for violin and viola, must have challenged his Salzburg audience in 1779 because much of it – and especially the moving central slow movement – sounds of a century later. SCO leader Stephanie Gonley and principal viola Max Mandel were the soloists and co-directors for this performance, which brought out the operatic flavour of the work. If Mozart did not actually repurpose the music of the closing Presto in The Marriage of Figaro we are unmistakably listening to a rehearsal for that score. Schubert's Symphony No. 4 (not lumbered with its unfortunate 'Tragic' nickname in this programme) is often seen as a step back from its predecessor, too reliant on earlier models, but the SCO made it unfold with increasing fascination, the intensity of the low strings and bassoon in the Andante followed by sparky syncopated Scherzo and a finale that had a clarity in its impact larger orchestras struggle to match. Gonley's direction here was very light-touch, prompting an interesting question about what any conductor could have brought to the performance.
