FOREWORD

Welcome to SCO News!

It has been a busy, exciting and very varied start to the year with many concerts and workshops across the length and breadth of Scotland as well as performances further afield in Europe.

There have been many highlights for me in my first season with the SCO and whilst there are still a couple of concerts to go in the current series, I must say that I was particularly moved by the performances in March of Sir James MacMillan’s extraordinary new Stabat Mater, with our friends The Sixteen and conductor Harry Christophers.

As the winter season draws to a close, we can now start to look forward to our summer touring programme. This is such an important part of our work as a National Performing Company and I am delighted that each year we are able to visit so many different venues and communities around Scotland. Between June and September you will find our musicians performing in venues as far apart as Selkirk and the Shetland Isles, St Andrews and Greenock and Langholm and Thurso. You will find details of all of our summer concerts in this edition of SCO News – I do hope you will be able to join the orchestra as they tour the country.

Gavin Reid

Two of the world’s greatest festivals – The Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms – have recently announced their programmes for 2017 and it is terrific to see the SCO featuring prominently in both. It is always a great honour to be invited to open the International Festival and this year – the Festival’s 70th anniversary – the SCO will begin proceedings with Haydn’s Symphony No 94 ‘Surprise’ – the very first work performed in the very first Festival, in 1947. Later in August, we travel to the Royal Albert Hall for a performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Schumann’s Symphony No 3 ‘Rhenish’, which you will also be able to hear broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

I hope that by now you will have received our 2017/18 Winter Season brochure. I have many wonderful memories of hearing the SCO in the Queen’s Hall and Usher Hall in the 1980s when I was at school and I know how important those concerts were in helping to instil in me a love of music and a determination to become a professional musician. So I am thrilled that from the start of next season all our tickets for Under 18s will be completely free. Please help us to spread the word.

As you will know, next season is Robin Ticciati’s last as our Principal Conductor. His musical insights and intelligence and the care and love that he has shown for the music he performs and the musicians he performs with have, I think, been the hallmarks of his time with the SCO. His programmes next Season are typical – highly distinctive, clearly recognisable themes, new paths of discovery, repertoire that seeks to extend the boundaries of a chamber orchestra and some of the most sought-after soloists in the world.

But before we get ahead of ourselves too much, I hope very much that you will be able to join us for the closing concerts of this Season

Gavin Reid

Chief Executive