VoxCarnyx

Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Swensen

Perth Concert Hall

If it was a treat to see the RSNO back to max strength for last weekend’s concert of Polish repertoire, it is no less exciting to see the SCO performing with a full line-up, however thoughtful has been its exploration of a wide range of chamber music for most of its digital offerings.

With former principal conductor Joseph Swensen on the podium and leader Stephanie Gonley as featured soloist, this is an all-Schumann programme, two works by Robert bracketing one by his wife, Clara. Like Thomas Sondergard with the RSNO, Swensen is clearly delighted to be working with a full band, and the swagger he and they bring to the Overture to Schumann’s sole opera Genoveva is superbly captured in the recording in the Perth Hall’s fine acoustic. Here, as in the Spring Symphony later, the wind soloists have plenty share of the spotlight, and there are some lovely performances, but it is the ensemble sound, and the vigour of it, that is the real treat.

Clara Schumann’s Three Romances were originally written, in 1853, for herself and the couple’s violinist friend Joseph Joachim to play, and this orchestral arrangement by the conductor has been performed by the SCO with Swensen himself as soloist. There is a cumulative emotional effect to the three short movements, and a suggestion in the Allegretto and Romance that Clara might have found a home on Broadway if she had been working a century later. Stephanie Gonley revels in the colour that is in her solo part, and that is mostly matched in Swensen’s orchestration – only in the last movement is the loss of the percussive quality of the piano something of a regret.

When Robin Ticciati conducted and recorded the Schumann symphonies with the SCO, his opening to the first of them was a deal crisper than Swensen’s account of it here, but there is such an energy to the development of this first movement that it more than makes up for that. From the opening trumpet fanfare, this is a sumptuous, full-blooded, account of a work the composer dashed off in days. There is a longed-for richness, rather than any solemnity, in the entry of the three trombones at the end of the Larghetto, and if the singular rhythm of the Scherzo lacks some buoyancy initially, the shaping of the whole work towards its joyous conclusion is emblematic of the season in full flower.  

Keith Bruce

Available to view online until Saturday May 22