The Glasshouse

If there’s one thing that the baroque era understood, it was how to make an entrance. Monsieur Jourdain, the hero of Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme has money but no taste, and for Jean-Baptiste Lully (who wrote the music for the première of the play in 1670), nothing said musical bling quite like a swaggering march in the Turkish manner. How to follow that? Here’s a full scale musical battle, as portrayed by the Bohemian-born, Salzburg-based Heinrich Biber in 1673. There are martial fanfares; a dissonant cacophony of folksongs for the troops, drum-rhythms (Biber suggests that the players put paper between their strings for a rattling effect), and a final, wailing lament of the wounded. Who needs visuals?

The star of tonight’s show is anything but ostentatious – in fact, the double bass gets shamefully few chances to shine. That changes now, as Will Duerden plays the Jewish atonement prayer Kol Nidrei – as adapted by Max Bruch in Liverpool in 1880 for cello, but sounding every bit as passionate on the bass. Bruch was not Jewish, but he had many close Jewish friends. “As an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of these melodies”, he wrote, “and therefore I gladly spread them through my arrangement”.

Edgar Meyer, described by The New Yorker as “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument”, has done more than most to put the double bass centre-stage in our time. Born in Tennessee in 1960, Meyer is a composer and bassist whose music  refuses to stay in one box – classical virtuosity meets bluegrass, folk and the rhythmic snap of American roots music. Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell and Hilary Hahn are just a few of his regular collaborators. Tonight we hear three different demonstrations of his knack for making the bass impossible to ignore: First Movement, an energetic musical tug-of-war between violin and bass, Instrumental, whose title is almost comically matter-of-fact for music with such character and drive, and Duet for Cello and Double Bass, a conversation between two supposedly lowly members of the string family that proves, yet again, that the bass has rather more to say than tradition usually allows.

Now we hear the bass as 18^th century man-of-fashion, courtesy of Václav (or Wenzl) Pichl – Bohemian-born violinist, friend of Mozart and Haydn and (if this elegant and affectionate concerto, probably written in the 1780s in Milan, is anything to go by), a composer who truly appreciated the double bass. The three movements are by turns stately, lyrical and brilliant, with echoes of Haydn’s C major Cello Concerto – as if to demonstrate that anything the cello can do, the bass can do better. Not that Giovanni Bottesini, “the Paganini of the double bass”, needed telling. With his superb Testore bass (rescued from the rubbish-heap of a marionette theatre) and his mighty bow “The Devastator”, he became a worldwide celebrity, and his self-penned Capriccio di Bravura (1858) shows you exactly why. You’ll believe an elephant can fly.

Gustav Holst joined the staff of St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, West London, in the autumn of 1905. He was a trombonist rather than a bass player but the school soon realised that he was no ordinary music teacher; and when he returned after the Easter holiday of 1913 it had completed a new music wing specially for him.

That demanded a celebration. Holst had been working since 1912 on a collection of spare musical ideas – folk songs, stray rhythms, and the finale of his Suite in F for Military Band (1911). He pulled them together and crafted, for the school’s string orchestra, a four movement suite whose freshness and sheer playability has made it a classic of the string repertoire. It’s lovely stuff, from the rollicking opening Jig, through the ingenious Ostinato (Holst makes sure the second violins enjoy themselves here) and poetic Intermezzo to the playful finale, in which an old English dance-tune, The Dargason finds itself in unlikely counterpoint with…well, wait and see.

Internationally renowned, calling Gateshead home.

37 musicians at the top of their game. Electrifying music, old and new. All the talent, determination, and creativity of the North East on a worldwide stage. From their home at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Royal Northern Sinfonia share the joy and wonder of orchestral music with thousands of people across the North of England – and beyond – every year.

From symphonies to string quartets, film soundtracks to choral masses, and original performances with awesome artists from Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Víkingur Ólafsson to Sam Fender and Self Esteem, the orchestra’s members have got one of the most varied jobs there is. They’re always looking for fresh new sounds from up-and-coming composers, inviting local communities to share a stage, and doing everything they can to inspire and prepare the musicians of tomorrow to one day take their place.

They’re also working hard to smash the barriers that can stop brilliant people getting into classical music. They’ve teamed up with national partners to support women conductors to develop their careers, to help global majority musicians get vital experience in the orchestra world, and to celebrate disabled and non-disabled musicians breaking new ground together in inclusive ensemble RNS Moves. And they bring new musical opportunities to the region, headlining the first-ever BBC Proms weekend outside London.

Because they whole-heartedly believe orchestral music is for anyone – big cities and rural villages, tiny babies and life-long listeners, die-hard fans and curious minds – they travel far and wide to make sure there’s top-notch classical music on offer in as many places as possible. You’ll find them in churches, castles, and community venues across the North, as well as leading the charge in Carlisle, Kendal, Middlesbrough, and Sunderland.

With 65 years of success to build on, they’ve signed a dynamic artistic leadership – Music Director Dinis Sousa, Artistic Partner Maria Włoszczowska, Principal Guest Conductor Nil Venditti and Associate Conductor Ellie Slorach – to lead the way into a bold, bright future.

Wherever the orchestra play and whoever they share a stage with, every performance is a chance to see, hear and feel the music.