VoxCarnyx

Perth Concert Hall

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra musicians have been rewarded for a sensational season with very good sales for the closing week of concerts, and that was especially good to see and hear in Perth, where a superb programme could be enjoyed in what is the finest acoustic in which to appreciate their playing.

Proving once again that nothing is beyond the SCO’s range, Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s programme bracketed two Ninth Symphonies around the singular character of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1.

The piano soloist for that was Steven Osborne, a musician of similarly eclectic capabilities, but ideally matched to this mercurial work. He was teamed with the solo trumpet of Aaron Azunda Akugbo, reflecting the origins of the work as an abandoned Trumpet Concerto.

Scored for a string ensemble, and benefitting from the augmented sections required for the symphonies, it is a strange but beguiling work, incorporating quotations from Beethoven and Haydn, and hugely virtuosic for the pianist. That was the composer himself at the work’s premiere, and it is not hard to hear his day-job as a movie-theatre accompanist in much of the writing.

It was preceded by the same composer’s Symphony No 9, one of his briefest, and less frequently heard than many of his longer works. That’s a pity, because it is a very colourful piece and the Allegro first movement makes a lively concert-opener, even if its frivolity was not what Stalin expected as a celebration of victory in 1945. Emelyanychev set a pacey tempo that didn’t deny the hints of music-hall about the score and maintained a lightness of touch in the performance.

After a robust solo from guest leader Sini Simonen, the scoring moved on to feature first clarinet Maximiliano Martin and principal trumpet Peter Franks before bassoonist Cerys Amrose-Evans had the lion’s share of the limelight from the Largo into the closing Allegretto. All were on top form, and, with some terrific pizzicato passages from the low strings, the orchestration was always intriguing and beautifully clear.

That set the template for a superb account of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 “From the New World” after the interval. If the Perth audience had been enthusiastic for music that was probably unfamiliar to many, they were about to be blown away by the interpretation of a well-loved work.

As they had been placed for the Shostakovich symphony, four basses were centre-stage, high at the back of the platform, the four horns on their right and trombones and tuba to the left. The strings were augmented to 18 violins and six each of violas and cellos. This was a big SCO, but still far short of symphony orchestra size and the winds were as usual, with oboist Katherine Bryar doubling on cor anglais for the Largo and first flute Andre Cebrian also playing piccolo.

If Shostakovich 9 is a compact symphony, albeit in five movements, here was a deliciously compact reading of Dvorak 9, the dynamic accuracy of the strings under that slow-movement cor anglais tune utterly mesmersing. Emelyanychev brought such finesse from the string players that it couldn’t help but draw as much attention as the composer’s best-known melody.

The rhythms of the Scherzo, be they Native American or Czech, were as precision-tooled and, indeed, every gleaming detail of Dvorak’s masterpiece shone as if being played for the first time in what was an unforgettable reading of an old war-horse of the repertoire.

These season-ending performances, in Perth, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and Glasgow City Halls have been dedicated to the memory of viola section stalwart of over 30 years, Brian Schiele. In the programme, 10 of his colleagues, past and present, share memories of his character, musicality and generosity. It is another example of the SCO doing things properly, but it was the music-making of the orchestra that really did him proud.

Keith Bruce

Picture of Aaron Azunda Akugbo by Olivia da Costa