Twice voted Best Musical Act at the Edinburgh Fringe, Olly and Owen have fast made a name for themselves presenting classical concerts for children, and their annual Christmas show is becoming as traditional as tinsel. Last year’s Christmas Swingalong featured the RSNO Big Band, but this year’s ‘It’s Snowtime’ saw the full, fabulous orchestra – over 70 of them – out in force.
With the men in white dinner jackets and the women in various beautiful full-length attire, all had additionally donned a little Christmas sparkle in the form of santa hats, antlers, drapings of tinsel - and a flashing red nose was even spotted somewhere in the brass section.
The audience gaily swung the luminous glowsticks purchased in the foyer, as the orchestra warmed the Christmas cockles with Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’ (which is apparently Russian for ‘three-horse open sleigh’). During this opening number, Olly and Owen appear, dressed as elves, one pulling the other along in a ‘one-man-fairy-lit’ open sleigh.
After a bit of jollity and banter that ensures full audience engagement, young dancers from The Manor School of Ballet perform a routine to Korsakov’s ‘Dance of the Tumblers’ from The Snow Maiden. The children in the audience seemed to enjoy this: each dancer enacting the role of a different street performer – magician, strongman, artist and acrobat – offered a visual focus and, just as young children prefer books with pictures, so this seemed to attract and hold their attention.
Next, we all took part in a singalong of Winter Wonderland, helped by the RSNO Junior Chorus and the song-sheets we had been handed on the way in. This ended in some hilarity with the orchestra throwing snowballs of cotton wool at each other and into the audience.
Highlights included: everyone on their feet for a ski-themed ‘dance’ to Sam Fonteyn’s Pop Looks Bach (probably best know to all as the theme from Ski Sunday); and Olly and Owen each playing a giant five-octave marimba to ‘Reindeer Ride’ from The Snow Queen by Savourna Stevenson, who was in the audience. This was a very beautiful, magical and Christmassy piece that artfully showcased the musical talent of the two hosts.
The finale was a twist on the Twelve Days of Christmas, with each day represented by a different Christmas tune. Everyone was again on their feet to do the requisite actions to a line from Deck The Halls, Little Donkey, White Christmas and Auld Lang Syne (among others). This was a most welcome and refreshing change, as one of the worst things about Christmas is the endless repetition, year on year, in every shop and on every radio station, of the same half-dozen Christmas ‘favourites’.
Christmas entertainment without Olly and Owen is fast becoming as unimaginable as mince pies without the cream and the brandy butter. Still singing our novel rendition of Twelve Days, we left the Usher Hall feeling warmer, cheerier and with our Christmas lights now fully switched on!
Children’s Classic Concerts appear across Scotland throughout the year.