07:00 pm
Catherine Larsen-Maguire Conductor
Ryan Corbett Accordion
Jay Capperauld Composer
ANNA CLYNE · “This Midnight Hour/Cette heure de minuit” (2015)
JAY CAPPERAULD · “Galvanic Dances” for Accordion and Orchestra (2025, German Premiere)
HECTOR BERLIOZ · “Symphonie fantastique” Op. 14 (1830)
Perhaps you are wondering why Scotland has not only a national football team, but also a National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (NYOS)? The Brits may have invented football; the same cannot be said of classical music. However, there’s no question that competition ensures diversity and high-class institutions, and the youth orchestras of Scotland and Wales have proven as much at Young Euro Classic several times. Great Britain’s north is home to a diverse and vibrant music scene. This time, it has produced a brand-new accordion concerto by the Scotsman Jay Capperauld. And anyone who has noticed during recent years the breath-taking virtuosity possible on that instrument will be eager to experience this highlight! The central work after the interval is Hector Berlioz’ famous Symphonie fantastique, a highly romantic dramatic love story poured into music with infinite imagination. The concert opens with a work by the English-American composer Anna Clyne, This Midnight Hour, whose music the composer describes as a “visual journey”. Let’s join the NYOS on this flight of imagination!
The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (NYOS) unites the 100 best young musicians from Scotland. Founded in 1978, it made its debut at the legendary Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1988. In 2000, the NYOS made its Young Euro Classic debut, last appearing at the Festival in 2007; in 2014, it undertook a major concert tour of China. In 2024, the ensemble NYOS Camerata was part of Young Euro Classic’s festival-within-the-festival “re:play”. The orchestra’s ABC is summarized by the three core terms of Ambition, Belonging and Creativity. In keeping with this triadic motto, young talents receive intense fostering under its roof, culminating in two annual working phases – in the spring and summer. Scottish composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, James McMillan, Sally Beamish, Anna Meredith and Helen Grime have been part of the orchestra’s concert programmes from the very beginning. With the founding of an NYOS Senior Orchestra and a Junior Orchestra, the breadth of activities has significantly increased.
For Catherine Larsen-Maguire, performing at the Konzerthaus Berlin is a bit of a home game. A native of Manchester, the conductor lives in the German capital, where she spent ten years as principal bassoon in the Orchestra of the Komische Oper at the beginning of her artistic career. Since 2012, Catherine Larsen-Maguire has pursued her conducting career: invitations this season have taken her to Paris and Toulouse, Galicia and Ljubljana as well as Schwerin, where she conducted a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. A special focus of her work is on contemporary music: in 2021, she led the world premiere of Alexander Goehr’s The Master Said with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; that same year, the premiere of Cathy Milliken’s Night Shift with Ensemble Modern at the Musikfest Berlin followed. In 2022, she conducted the Scottish Ensemble, Ensemble Resonanz and the Trondheim Soloists in the first performance of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Deep Dark Shine. She has a special passion for working with young musicians: Catherine Larsen-Maguire was appointed chief conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland in June 2023.
Born in Glasgow in 1999, Ryan Corbett first encountered the accordion when his grandmother gave him a second-hand instrument at the age of eleven. This sparked his fascination for the accordion and for Scottish folk music too, which finally led him to study at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in his hometown. His compatriot, the composer James McMillan, praised him as “one of the most astonishing and surprising newcomers in Scottish music”. In the meantime, Corbett has not only won international competitions in Germany, Italy and China, but also performed as part of the Scottish celebrations of the coronation of Charles III in 2023. The musician is keen to expand the accordion repertoire; thus, he has written hundreds of arrangements and regularly performs world premieres. In 2024, he not only gave the world premiere of a new accordion concerto by the British composer Daniel Soley, but also the British premiere of the Accordion Concerto by Mikhail Pletnev. Ryan Corbett plays a classic Bugari Spectrum accordion built in Castelfidardo in Italy.
The Scottish composer Jay Capperauld, born in 1989, can already look back on a multitude of commissions performed by renowned institutions such as the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra or Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He achieved particular success with his piano concerto Endlings of 2018; it was subsequently used in the film Changing Landscapes, which the BBC Scotland made as part of the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in 2021. In 2023, Capperauld received the prestigious commission from King Charles III to write a piece for the celebrations The Honours of Scotland in Edinburgh: Schiehallion! is based on three Scottish folk melodies selected by the King himself. In 2022, Capperauld was appointed principal guest composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO). Several commissioned works have resulted from this: thus, the SCO first performed Bruckner’s Skull in February 2025 under the baton of its chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, a work inspired by Bruckner’s obsessions with life and death. In April, Carmina Gadelica, a work for ten wind players inspired by Gaelic melodies, had its world premiere.