Robert Saxton - Viola Concerto

World première :: Cheltenham Festival 1986

Paul Silverthorne - viola
Wilfried Boettcher - conductor
Scottish Chamber Orchestra

David Cairns
”In one respect Robert Saxton’s Viola Concerto, commissioned by the Cheltenham Festival and given by Paul Silverthorne and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Wilfried Boettcher, belied expectation.

The composer’s programme note speaks of “the quiet loneliness at the heart the instrument” which in the end “triumphs over the orchestra”; and the viola does so, reducing the orchestra’s exuberance to a soft pulsation of tom-toms and then vanishing in a shower of sparks, its rapid upward spiral accompanied only by the swoosh of a suspended cymbal. But it triumphs by the pyrotechnic character of the solo writing, which is of extraordinary energy and brilliance.

Even when the viola is playing the long incantatory melodic line which provides this cleverly worked score with its main material, it is often involved in strenuous octaves and agile leaps; and at the afternoon rehearsal I found myself wishing that the slow movement,  the third of four continuous sections, had lasted longer. Soon it too was putting the soloist through some pretty lively paces. At the performance such regrets were banished by the sustained excitement that Saxton generates and maintains  through the 18 minutes of his score.

The slow movement is magical, with the orchestra responding to the viola’s flights with slowly shifting string chords, bell-like octaves on piano and vibraphone, deep bass-drum tremors, undulating woodwind phrases. But the scoring throughout is beautifully imagined, luminous, rich in colour, always propelling the music forward, and rising near the end to a dazzling flurry of activity before the soloist dismisses the orchestra. Violists have an important addition to their repertoire, though they will have to work hard to equal Paul Silverthorne, who played it, from memory, with enviable fire and assurance.”

City of London Sinfonia - Hickox
Royal Albert Hall London :: BBC Proms :: August 1993 

Financial Times - Max Loppert
"Robert Saxton’s strongly imagined, coherent and continuously vivid  Viola Concerto ……the dramatic contrasts of mood afford the music a graphic quality of which Bartók would not have been ashamed. .. the concerto is so assured, so gripping for the listener,  and plainly so rewarding for a violist of Paul Silverthorne’s calibre to play (he was the works inspirer and first soloist)”

The Times - Noel Goodwin
"(The concerto draws) the most reticent of orchestral instruments into the spotlight, and Paul Silverthorne, for whom it was written, proved himself a virtuoso in sensitivity and technique." 


The Guardian - Edward Greenfield
"…it was welcome that Robert Saxton's Viola Concerto was so compact in its four sharply conceived and well-balanced movements. Paul Silverthorne was the masterly soloist, finding lyricism even in some of the grittiest string writing."