Funny, faithful and inventive: Scottish Opera’s Barber of Seville reviewed

A violinist friend in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra used to talk about an orchestra’s ‘muscle memory’; a collective instinct that transmits itself, unspoken and unconscious, among the members of the ensemble. The occasion was a return visit from Sir Simon Rattle, a good decade and a half after he’d left Birmingham. At that point, perhaps only one third of the musicians had been present when Rattle last conducted this particular work. No matter. ‘You know how we play this,’ said Rattle, and sure enough they did, slipping as one into the exact articulation and dynamics that Rattle had instilled all those years ago. As with the human body, cells are replaced, but the individual remains the same.

So when Sir Mark Elder steps down as music director of the Hallé Orchestra next summer, to be succeeded by Kahchun Wong, it might not be the end of the story. We might still, on occasion, get to hear Elder and his orchestra responding to each other as naturally as they did in Manchester last week. I’ve written before about the effortlessness (like a couple finishing each other’s sentences) that comes when a conductor and orchestra have lived with each other for a very long time indeed. Twenty-four years is an epic tenure these days and the players, by all accounts, are more than ready for a change. But you can also bet that within 18 months they’ll be reminiscing during the morning tea break about what a legend Elder was; and how well he understood them.

 And they’ll be dead right. It’s the little things: the opening phrase of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, for example. It’s just four notes, grouped in two pairs, falling then rising. Brahms marks them to be played at a uniform piano but a string player’s instinct would be to insert a discreet crescendo as the phrase rises.