SCO / Power
City Halls, Glasgow
With the caveat that it had not occurred to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s management team (and that I have never been especially good at sums), I calculate that the SCO’s charismatic and popular Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev will become the longest serving in the orchestra’s history when he reaches the end of his latest contract extension – to 2031 “at least”.
That was the headline announcement in Chief Executive Gavin Reid’s unveiling of the orchestra’s new season before Friday’s concert – a season that will include the first four Beethoven symphonies and the composer’s Violin Concerto as the SCO’s contribution to the joint Beethoven 200 celebrations with the RSNO, BBC SSO and Scottish Opera.
Those future plans were tinged with sadness, however, as the funeral had taken place earlier in the day of Brian Schiele, a member of the viola section for more than 30 years who had resumed playing after major surgery only for his cancer to return. This season’s closing concerts next month, conducted by Emelyanychev, will be dedicated to his memory.
As it happened, this programme appropriately featured his instrument, in the hands of soloist Lawrence Power and in three of the compositions in the programme he directed. Its linking of Baroque music with more contemporary works was very much in Emelyanychev’s line, and Power’s selections made for just as interesting a listening lesson.
French Baroque pieces opened each half, Couperin’s Les barricades mysterieuses in a haunting quintet arrangement (bass clarinet, clarinet, viola, cello and bass) by Thomas Ades, and Rameau’s much more familiar Les Sauvages – which also started life on the harpsichord – performed in a style a little like that of Jordi Savall, if more “salon”.
Power followed the Couperin with part of the Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra by Vaughan Williams which references Bach and also prefigured the Rameau in its rusticity. As well as some virtuoso stuff for the viola, it has a crucial role for harp in the Moto Perpetuo, which closed Power’s selection and traveled a long way from its Baroque inspiration.
Michael Tippett’s Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli was an especially fascinating inclusion, originally commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival and part of a programme assembled by director Ian Hunter for the summer of 1953 that was little short of astonishing. Back then, the orchestra of Italian radio had played the original Corelli from which Tippett took his ingredients for a piece performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Here it required very specific deployment of the strings on the platform, which had very audible sonic significance, and solo roles for orchestra leader Stephanie Gonley and first cello Philip Higham as well as Power.
That 1953 EIF programme also included a new Viola Concerto for Scottish violist William Primrose by Paul Racine Fricker, and this programme concluded with the Scottish premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s new Viola Concerto, dedicated to Power. If it was difficult to hear Baroque antecedents there were certainly echoes of later classical composers in a very approachable piece.
As in the Tippett, there was a lot for the orchestral violas to do as well as the soloist, who has a real showpiece cadenza towards the end of a work that follows conventional structure but with real wit, and lovely symphonic swell and coda to finish.
Keith Bruce
Portrait of Lawrence Power by Giorgia Bertazzi