SCO / Elijah
SCO / Elijah
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
If Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah has had a mixed press over the years, it’s not because the piece is second rate, but rather because it poses a musical, as well as technical, challenge to anything less than first rate choirs. This superb performance mounted by the SCO and SCO Chorus to complete its 50th Anniversary Season was living proof.
Rarely have I felt so gripped by the lengthy, yet energetically succinct, theatrical thread with which Mendelssohn depicts the turmoil of Elijah’s testing mission to return the God-forsaken idolaters of Baal to recognising their true God, with all the cataclysms that accompany it. What the composer did, in time for its Birmingham premiere in 1846, was to encapsulate this in vivid, quasi-operatic terms. On Thursday at the Usher Hall, SCO chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev harnessed its unfaltering intensity, gleaning from his orchestra, chorus and soloists a performance that flew like “the mighty wind”.
The unorthodoxy of the opening played its own part in tilting us towards the edge of our seats – an awakening pronouncement from Elijah (baritone Roderick Williams) before the down-to-business assertion of a fugal overture whose chromatic, two-note opening motif could so easily have inspired John Williams’ Jaws theme. Then with hardly a second to catch breath, the SCO Chorus announced their own presence with an opening chorus, sung with penetrating precision, yet warmed by neatly nuanced phrasing.
Thereafter, the momentum never once flagged. The soloists, seated either side of the stage, remained alert to their cues to move to and from centre stage, and from whom some of the loveliest arias took flight.
Tenor Thomas Walker brought heartwarming purity to “If with all your heart”, soprano Carolyn Sampson imbuing “Hear ye, Israel” with sublime lustre. Anna Stéphany’s gorgeous mezzo tones sat perfectly with “Woe unto them who forsake him!”, unshaken by an errant (if perhaps timely) mobile phone. The sublime resignation in Williams’ “It is enough” gained added poignancy against the vibrato-less cellos, while Soprano II, Rowan Pierce, cut a soaring presence as The Youth, even if it that brief role remains more characterful when sung by a young treble voice.
Beyond all else, though, this was a collegiate triumph in which Emelyanychev’s vision held firm in shaping the common will. Every note had defined purpose; each paragraph in the drama bore distinctive cogency. There wasn’t a singe moment where the energy or excitement sapped. If the SCO has proved over this Anniversary Season that it’s riding on a magnificent high, this was the absolute pinnacle.
Ken Walton