VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

Mozart’s Mass in C minor is something of an enigma. He never completed it, partly because he was doing it off his own bat rather than at the behest of an impatient patron, so it’s missing bits and pieces, including the entirety of the Agnus Dei. Successive editors have attempted varying degrees of completion, but as a general rule, performances that stick closest to what Mozart left us tend to be the more satisfying.

That was the approach adopted by the SCO and SCO Chorus on Friday, which formed part of a Mozart Gala programme directed by the orchestra’s irrepressible chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. And while the opening “Prague” Symphony and its punchy complexity offered a wholly compatible Mozartian complement, it was the Mass performance that provided, ironically, the most complete satisfaction.

Which it did right from the start in a Kyrie sung with penetrating clarity – great consonants! – by Gregory Batsleer’s finely tuned chorus and soon introducing angelic soprano Luce Crowe, whose vocal versatility and acrobatic precision were to remain a feature of her performance. Compare that to her companion soprano Anna Dennis’s more rapturous numbers, moments of languishing expressiveness and generosity that especially lit up the Gloria. 

Of the male soloists, Scots tenor Thomas Walker added a more operatic edge, while bass-baritone Edward Grint, though with relatively little to do, fitted seamlessly into the full quartet in the Benedictus. 

Emelyanychev’s direction was, as ever, energetic and packed with detailed idiosyncrasies. There’s something very Bach-like in much of this music, and he treated it a such, lithesome and thrustful, but its phrases given plentiful space to breath. There were moments where he allowed the orchestra to overwhelm the chorus, and the SCO’s upper strings seemed anxious at times, occasionally affecting intonation and unanimity in attack. But this is music that deserves to be heard, and in that justice was done.

To an extent, the same applied to the “Prague” Symphony, though this wasn’t the SCO at its absolute finest. Where things went smoothly, the dramatic excitement of this work played out effectively, in particular the quasi-operatic thrills and spills of the opening movement, the rusticated stateliness of the central Andante, and the homeward sprint of the Finale. Again, the upper violins occasionally faltered, and even Emelyanychev seemed less fiery than usual in places. That’s only because he normally delivers perfection-plus.

Ken Walton