Garry Walker holds the positions of Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Permanent Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Conductor of Paragon Ensemble.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Garry Walker took up the ‘cello at the age of seven, played in the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra and became a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University and was awarded a Junior Fellowship in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1997 to study with Edward Warren and Timothy Reynish. This enabled him to conduct a wide repertoire from the baroque to the contemporary, performing with many celebrated musicians.

In November 1998 he conducted a highly acclaimed performance of Henze’s opera Pollicino which opened the “Henze at the RNCM” Festival and subsequently conducted the RNCM Sinfonia at the Montepulciano Festival in Italy. In May 1999 Garry Walker gained the first distinction ever awarded by the RNCM for conducting and in July 1999 won the Sixth Leeds Conductor’s Competition. His relationship with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra began in October 1999 when he made his notably successful London debut replacing at very short notice an indisposed Daniele Gatti in the orchestra’s opening concert of their season at the Barbican. In January 2000 he took part in a masterclass with Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra as a result of which he was invited to take part in the Conducting Academy with Pierre Boulez at the Aix en Provence Festival in the summer of 2000.

In the UK Garry Walker has worked with such orchestras as the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and Scottish Symphony Orchestras, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, English Northern Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera. Chamber orchestras include the Northern Sinfonia, Ensemble 10:10, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

He has appeared regularly at the Edinburgh Festival since 2002 conducting concerts with the Edinburgh Festival Ensemble, Paragon Ensemble, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra including a performance of Mahler Symphony No 2 in 2003 and a much acclaimed production of Curlew River in 2005 and in 2006 he returned to conduct a new opera by Stuart MacRae, The Assassin Tree. This was a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

In Germany he has conducted a tour with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and a series of concerts with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra. He returned to Germany at the beginning of 2003 to make his debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and again in 2005 with the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover.

In 2004 he appeared for the first time with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philahrmonique de Luxembourg and has recently made his debut with Collegium Musicum in Denmark.

Guy Johnston  - 'cello

Sibelius wrote a great deal of incidental music accompanying plays and tableaux and it was a movement from his Press Celebrations Music of 1899, a series of tableaux with musical accompaniment protesting over Russian censorship of the Finnish Press, that made the young man’s name. The finale was called Finland Awakes, later renamed Finlandia, and it came to be a rallying call for Finnish nationalism. Pelléas et Mélisande was composed for a production of Maeterlinck’s play in Helsinki in March 1905 and was conducted by the composer. He had composed five overtures (one for each act) and five other pieces, and from these he created a suite of nine movements. 

I    At the Castle Gate – the original overture to Act 1: a sombre but rich sounding piece, linked with the BBC’s The Sky at Night TV programme which it has introduced for over 50 years.

II   Mélisande – a cor anglais solo describes her sitting in the woods beside a spring.

III  At the Seashore – the principal characters stand on the shore watching a boat sail away.

IV  A Spring in the Park – a gentle waltz sets the scene in which the principal characters visit a spring in a park where Mélisande drops the ring given to her by Golaud.

V  The Three Blind Sisters – the orchestral version of a song sung by Mélisande.

VI Pastorale – Mélisande’s pregnancy is discussed by Golaud and Pelleas.

VII Mélisande at the Spinning Wheel – busy string writing captures the spinning wheel in motion. Around it are Mélisande’s thoughts.

VIII Entr’acte – a lighter mood, as Pelleas and Mélisande agree to meet.

(King Arkel converses with Mélisande, Golaud strikes his wife and kills Pelleas).

IX The Death of Mélisande – this ‘pearl of the suite’ sees Sibelius at his best in slow, emotional music.

This concerto tends to be largely overshadowed by the composer’s piano concerto. Written in the incredibly short space of 15 days in October 1850, Schumann continued to revise it up to 1854. His wife, Clara wrote in her diary for November 16^th, 1850:

‘Last month, he composed a concerto for violincello that pleased me very much’.

Almost a year later another entry tells us more about the work:

‘I have played Robert’s Violincello Concerto again and thus procured for myself a truly musical and happy hour.  The romantic quality, the flight, the freshness and the humour and also the highly interesting interweaving of ’cello and orchestra are, indeed, wholly ravishing and what deep sentiment there is in all the melodic passages’.

Private and informal rehearsals with a number of ’cellists followed its completion but the first public performance took place in Leipzig in 1860 after Schumann’s death. The work then faded from view and it was largely through Pablo Casals that the concerto secured its place in the repertoire early in the 20th century.

Published with the title Concerto for ’Cello with orchestral accompaniment it is clear that as far as Schumann was concerned the ’cello was the focal point of the work; indeed there is little rest for the soloist – the ’cello is there to ‘dazzle and sing’. 

I Nicht zu schnell – three sustained chords prepare for the entry of the soloist who immediately plays the principal theme of the movement before the full orchestra bursts into life. The ’cello returns to calm things down and to take centre stage. The ’cello continues to ‘dazzle and sing’ using the full range of the instrument and it seems to be determined to be in control of the general mood of the movement. It is the ’cello that controls the joining of the first movement to the second.

II Langsam – a delightful idea in this central movement is a duet between the principal ’cello of the orchestra and the soloist. This short lyrical movement is joined to the finale. The woodwind repeat the very opening theme of the concerto, the ’cello mulls over the idea then takes it into a quicker passage which, after a solo passage for ’cello, leads us straight into the finale.

III Sehr lebhaft – a lively little idea, based on part of the opening theme and three chords, provide much of the material for this movement. The ’cello writing is again melodic but also lighter in character. Towards the end Schumann writes a cadenza with a discrete orchestral accompaniment, an innovation for its day. The music accelerates towards the conclusion as the solo writing scampers up and down the instrument before three chords bring an end to the concerto.

In the summer of 1788 Mozart’s financial state was desperate. His letters to a fellow freemason, Michael Puchberg are clear evidence of the near panic that almost engulfed Mozart at this time.

Vienna early June 1788
Dearest Brother
Your true friendship and brotherly love embolden me to ask a great favour of you. I still owe you eight ducats. Apart from the fact that at the moment I am not in a position to pay you back this sum, my confidence in you is so boundless that I dare to implore you to help me out with a hundred gulden until next week, when my concerts in the Casino are to begin. By this time I shall certainly have received my subscription money and shall then be able quite easily to pay back 136 gulden with my warmest thanks’. 

Puchberg noted on the letter ‘Sent 100 gulden’. Days later, Mozart wrote again, this time requesting him ‘to assist me for a year or two with one or two thousand gulden, at a suitable rate of interest’. The letter goes on to inform Puchberg that the family had moved to cheaper lodgings. In a further letter of late June Mozart is ‘distressed that circumstances prevent you [Puchberg] from assisting me as much as I could wish’.

The letter ends ‘Do come and see me. I am always at home and have done more work in the ten days since I came to live here than in two months in my former quarters….IF BLACK THOUGHTS DID NOT COME SO OFTEN, THINGS WOULD BE EVEN BETTER’.

In a fourth letter to Puchberg dated early July 1788, Mozart encloses two pawnbroker’s tickets and asks Puchberg to help him with any money able to be raised on the tickets. 

Despite all this, the summer of 1788 saw Mozart complete three major symphonies: No. 39, No. 40 and the ‘Jupiter’, his final symphony. The three symphonies are totally different in mood and character with only No. 40 exhibiting ‘black thoughts’ of any lasting length. 

According to the diary of Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver, the nickname was given to the symphony by Salomon, Haydn’s great champion in London. It first appeared on a copy published in Edinburgh in 1819 and then on Clementi’s piano arrangement in 1823. 

I Allegro vivace – this movement is rich in ideas, many of which are of an operatic character. Was Mozart hoping to remind audiences of his opera pedigree? In fact there is only uncertain evidence that any of the final three symphonies were performed in Mozart’s lifetime. Performances of ‘a Symphony’ in Leipzig and two concerts in Vienna in 1791 conducted by Salieri, where ‘a grand symphony’ was performed, provide no strong evidence.

II Andante cantabile – violins and violas are muted in a movement that begins in a conventionally melodic fashion but an undercurrent of agitation soon causes ripples in the music.

III Menuetto – back to the good old days with a strong minuet and a trio that suggests Haydn, one of his teachers, with its question and answer section balanced by full-blown orchestral confidence.

IV Molto Allegro –this is without a doubt a tour de force. There are five ideas in this finale, the first being four notes that Mozart had used before, notably in his first symphony written at the age of eight. All five ideas are presented and developed until, in the conclusion of the finale, all five themes are brought together in a ‘dazzling display of genius’ that crowns what proved to be Mozart’s final excursion into the world of the symphony.

© Barry Sharkey 2009