If it's not Scottish, it's CR*P!!

From Groundskeeper Willie to Sean Connery, who doesn't like all things Scottish? They've got bagpipes, men wearing skirts without underwear, shortbread, haggis, golf, and the perhaps the finest beverage in the world. And I'm not talking about irn bru, lads and lassies!

The Scottish countryside being the ultimate in misty, fairy-tale romanticism, has inspired many musicians to write works evocative of the country. German composer Max Bruch, was enamored of the writings of Sir Walter Scott and though he never went to Scotland, composed the Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, incorporating many Scottish folk themes into the piece. Sadly, we are not playing THIS work for violin this week, but rather his Second Violin Concerto. Also a good piece, but not particularly Scottish.

We are however, playing two works inspired by Felix Mendelssohn's trip to Scotland.

Fingal's Cave is on the Hebridean island of Staffa. Twenty meters wide, and over sixty meters deep, the cave is an impressive sight with huge hexagonal rock pillars stretching high out of the sea. On stormy days the sound of waves crashing against the rocks echoes across the island, and it is not surprising that Fingal's Cave was originally called ‘Uamh Binne' – ‘the cave where the sea makes music'.

In the summer of 1829, Mendelssohn traveled to Scotland with his friend Karl Klingemann and spend three weeks exploring the country by foot, pony, and steamer. Like Bruch, Mendelssohn was enamored by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, and he already had a vision of the country through his exposure to Scott and 18th century poet James Macpherson. The reality lived up to the literary portrait, prompting Mendelssohn to write in a letter back home, “....everything looks so stern and robust, half-enveloped in haze or smoke or fog.”

"Discovered" by 18th-century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks in 1772, the cave actually became known as Fingal's Cave AFTER Mendelssohn visited it and wrote Die Hebriden (in English, Fingal's Cave Opus 26). Fingal, Fionn mac Cumhail, was the eponymous hero of a poem by James Macpherson.

Mendelssohn's overture popularized the cave as a tourist destination. Other famous 19th-century visitors included author Jules Verne, poets William Wordsworth, John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and impressionist artist Joseph Turner, who painted "Staffa, Fingal's Cave" in 1832. The playwright August Strindberg also sets scenes from his play A Dream Play in a place called "Fingal's Grotto." Queen Victoria also made the trip.

The final work on this weekends' concerts, the Scottish Symphony, has Mendelssohn not quoting Scottish folk tunes but rather trying to recreate the feeling of Scotland that he held inside him. On a visit to Holyrood Palace and the ruined abbey on its grounds, he wrote his family:

"This evening at twilight we went to the palace where Queen
Mary lived and loved.... The chapel close to it is now roofless;
grass and ivy grow there and at the broken altar, Mary was
crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything around is ruined and
decayed, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in
that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish symphony."

Mendelssohn made some initial sketches of the symphony while still in Scotland, and then tried to revisit the score on an 1831 trip to Italy. Although known as Symphony No. 3, it is actually the last of the five mature symphonies Mendelssohn completed. We hope you will join us this weekend for our trip to musical Scotland (mostly). Who knows, there may be some underwear-less men in skirts gadding about, and we promise- no haggis!!!