VoxCarnyx

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

There has been nothing very chamber-sized about Maxim Emelyanychev’s concerts launching the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s new season, with large orchestral works bracketing Nicola Benedetti’s premiere of a new James MacMillan concerto last week and then the SCO Chorus in the choir stalls for Haydn’s Creation.

The Creation seems to be having a moment, as the secular elements that made it problematic for the church in the past chime with the environmental worries of the present. It is good to hear a big work by “Papa” Haydn with more regularity ­– he does a great deal with those first six days in the book of Genesis. While the work’s most famous hymn tune, The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God, is given to the chorus, the orchestra and all three soloists have some fine meaty music to showcase their capabilities.

That trio had a late substitution, with German soprano Lydia Teuscher coming in for Sophie Bevan, who is ill. As we were actually hearing Die Schopfung, the German text version of a work that was composed with both that and English as options, she was an appropriate choice, and proved a very fine singer. When she forsook the role of Gabriel for that of Eve at the start of Part Three, Hanno Muller-Brachmann (now Adam rather than Raphael) led her by the hand to the centre of the stage in a gesture that fitted the sense of mutual enjoyment that emanated from the stage on Thursday evening – and was all the better for being initiated by the more mannered bass-baritone.

For natural fluency, in German as well as in the music, it was tenor Andrew Staples (Uriel) who set the pace. He did not do anything particularly theatrical as he moved from his chair at the side to centre stage to sing, but every syllable was filled with meaning and purpose. The opening of Part Three, when a duo of flutes prefaced his softly sung introduction of Adam and Eve, was exquisite.

In the more descriptive music, with the orchestral writing at its best, the other two soloists had their share of the limelight. Haydn is at the peak of his powers with the evocation of birds and animals at the start of Part Two and Teuscher’s aria with the SCO woodwind soloists taking turns to partner her was simply gorgeous.

That is immediately followed by Raphael’s finest moment, the recitative of whales in the deep matched to a sextet continuo of the lower strings – one example of the many variations Haydn introduces to standard structural practice, with a string quintet taking that role early in Part Three.

Elsewhere continuo is in the more predictable hands of harpsichord and first cello Phillip Higham, but this being Emelyanychev, there were plenty of unscripted flourishes when he switched his attention to the keyboard. The beautiful, and clearly audible, instrument onstage was another element in his conductor’s armoury, and he occasionally added an extra left hand chord to the mix even as orchestra and chorus were in full flow.

The quality of the sung German from the front of the stage was paralleled by the diction of the chorus behind, although their crisp beginning to phrases was not always matched by their conclusion of them. Chorusmaster Gregory Batsleer has this choir beautifully calibrated, and the conductor was evidently quite comfortable with that part of the whole ensemble even when he felt it necessary to bring in the soloists.

Not only was Emelyanychev alive to all the details of the score, he also shaped the entire narrative of the performance. Certainly the composer makes that easy with the meticulous structure of the work, but it is not often that The Creation story is told with the clarity the conductor and his team brought to the job here.

Keith Bruce

Portrait of Lydia Teuscher by Shirley Suarez