BBC Scottish SO in India - Mark Tully reports

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is currently on tour in India. They have been joined by journalist and broadcaster Sir Mark Tully …

Delhi audiences are accustomed to Indian classical music concerts where they shout their approval at particularly moving moments in recitals. On Thursday night (3 April) 1800 people crowded into a cavernous auditorium and observed the Western Classical tradition by sitting in pin-drop silence to hear the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra play Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave), Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 5 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 4.

But there was no doubting the audience’s enthusiasm as they rose to their feet, shouted and clapped, clapped, and clapped again, to applaud the orchestra, the conductor James MacMillan and the violinist Nicola Benedetti. Discipline did break down during the lighthearted encores. The audience roared with laughter when they recognised the tunes in Eddie McGuire's arrangement of Bollywood melody The Snake Charmer, and clapped in time to the final Highland Reel. Then once again they rose to their feet to show what the rare visit of a Western orchestra meant to them. Ensuring that there will be a future audience for Western Classical music, on Wednesday (2 April) the orchestra gave two concerts for schoolchildren. Care had been taken to see that most of the audiences, totalling 3600, came from government schools which are attended by children of poorer parents.

Now the orchestra has moved on to Mumbai, a very different city. Delhi, the capital of India is dominated by politicians, bureaucrats, and all those whose business lies with the central government. Political activity is particularly frenetic at this time with India about to mount the world’s greatest democratic spectacle, the largest general election ever held. Delhi has grown in the 70-plus years since independence from a city which felt more like a small town than a capital to a vast conurbation, with one of the world’s biggest diplomatic communities. On the other hand Mumbai, or Bombay as it was known, is one of the three great metropolises founded by the British. The commercial capital of India today, it’s also the city most influenced by modern Western culture, and the home of the country’s only professional symphony orchestra.

Yet, in one of those contrasts so common in India, which throughout its known history has been a melting-pot of races and religions, Mumbai is also the home of that peculiarly Indian cinema, Bollywood, and the music that goes with it. During their visit to another of the metropolis founded by the British, Chennai (once known as Madras), members of the orchestra visited the KM Music Conservatory which Bollywood’s most prominent composer A.R. Rahman founded. He composed the music for the international hit Slumdog Millionaire. They also played to another 3000 children from Chennai schools where the educational institution Rhapsody delivers much-needed curriculum music.

During this last stage of their highly successful Indian tour, organised in partnership with the British Council, the orchestra, which also contains 14 students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, will continue their educational work in Mumbai, work with the Mehli Mehta Foundation, and give another public concert broadcast live in the UK on BBC Radio 3. The concert-goers in the auditorium of the National Centre for the Performing Arts will be more familiar with Western classical music than the Delhi audience, but I am confident they will be no less enthusiastic.

• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
• Nicola Benedetti
• Sir Mark Tully