Finding soloists within its own ranks is no longer a tactic the Scottish Chamber Orchestra reserves for summer touring to Scotland’s smaller halls, although that was where principal cello Philip Higham last played the Schumann Cello Concerto with his colleagues.
In another superbly-structured programme from Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev and the SCO, Higham’s performance of a work he has securely under his fingers was preceded by the young Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and followed after the interval by the UK premiere of Jorg Widmann’s 5 Albumblatter, the composer’s concerto-like homage to Schumann, written as a competition piece for cello students. The orchestrated version of Debussy’s gorgeously melodic Petite Suite brought the concert to a sumptuous conclusion.
In contradiction of the printed programme, it was only in the Mendelssohn that we heard natural timpani, horns, and trumpets, the latter especially effective towards the end of the piece. Emelyanychev found a very wide range of orchestral sound and intricate balance in this brief piece, that might be seen as minor Mendelssohn.
Higham may know the Schumann well, but he never succumbed to the temptation of Romantic wallowing in the music. This was a rigorous performance of a work that surely now has its proper place in the pantheon of concertos for his instrument. If the opening is structurally similar to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, the flow of the piece is all Schumann and the finale, with the soloist’s fiendishly tricky arpeggios in dialogue with the orchestra, surely influenced the composer’s revision of the Fourth Symphony.
Schumann’s chamber music for piano and cello (his own instruments) lie behind the fun and games of Widmann’s 2022 work, also highly technically demanding, but smile-making as well. There is some deconstruction of those influences in the opening movement, amusing dialogue with the bassoons in the rhythmic Liebelei, and a fourth movement that imagines Clara and Robert doing a Bossa Nova around the ballroom. The finale is entitled Mit Humor, but that is an instruction that seemed superfluous.
Debussy’s Petite Suite began as a work for two pianos and the first two movements contain two of his best known tunes. The orchestrated version his publisher commissioned becomes richer as the four movements unfold, and, as he had with the Mendelssohn, Emelyanychev revealed the work’s riches incrementally. Like the Schumann, this is music that can become mushy, but that was never a danger here, in the conductor’s pin-sharp attention to detail. Pointillism, rather than Impressionism perhaps.
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.
It is not yet an imminent problem, but there are two succession issues that the Scottish Chamber Orchestra will have to address, and they both look challenging.
Scottish composer Jay Capperauld has set a very high bar for whoever follows him as the orchestra’s Associate Composer, in providing bespoke works that suit every aspect of the SCO’s multi-faceted schedule. He was at it again last week with the world premiere of his Stylus Scarlatti, arrangements for chamber orchestra of four keyboard sonatas from the first half of the 18th century by Domenico Scarlatti, precision-tooled to fit Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s now-annual “Baroque Inspirations” concerts.
In those, the conductor, often leading ensembles from the keyboard and throwing in some wind instrument playing during the interval, matches classic early music with more recent works that draw on that era. Capperauld’s new work was perhaps one the most straightforward pieces he has supplied to the SCO library, but in its nods to the way other modern composers – like Michael Nyman – have visited the same territory it was characteristically knowing, as well as containing music tailored to specific solo talents in the orchestra.
The other challenge will, of course, be the eventual departure of Emelyanychev himself. It is almost inconceivable that there may be someone else with his combination of talents and enormous, infectious, energy waiting in the wings.
On Sunday afternoon at the Queen’s Hall, “Maxim & Friends” teamed him with the SCO’s string section leaders for two Schumann chamber works from 1842: the Piano Quartet, Op 47 and the Piano Quintet, Op 44.
With the string players using gut strings, Emelyanychev’s keyboard was a London-built 1888 instrument from French piano-makers Erard, borrowed from Glasgow University. Its distinct ringing tone – absolutely clear even if it lacked the muscle of a modern concert grand – combined beautifully with the string sound in a performance that may have been very close to how the works were originally heard, but refreshed them bracingly for modern ears.
These demanding pieces, composed for Schumann’s virtuoso wife Clara and the top string players in Germany at the time, are among the sunniest he wrote, particularly the Quartet, with its lovely Andante Cantabile movement – set up here by a startlingly brisk account of the Scherzo.
Both are in E flat, but the Quintet is more epic in scale as the composer explores and reworks his material with the thoroughness of a Beethoven symphony. The performances of both, with Emelyanychev’s keyboard skills matched by those of violinists Stephanie Gonley and Marcus Barcham Stevens, Max Mandel on viola and Philip Higham on cello, were absolutely first rank.
At Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday evening, there was a very specific chamber approach to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3, played by just ten strings, opening a programme again played entirely using gut strings. Both warm and rustic-sounding, the sound gave a particular quality to an expanded ensemble for Britten’s youthful Simple Symphony which suited its folk-influenced music well.
For Handel’s Water Music, it was a more hybrid band on stage, with modern rather than natural horns joining the ensemble. Perhaps that was simply a pragmatic decision, for reliable accuracy of pitch, but the result was more than satisfactory, and the little harpsichord flourishes at the start of some movements were a characteristic Emelyanychev addition.
SCO Principal Condustor Maxim Emelyanychev directs the orchestra in a programme of Baroque Inspirations, featuring works by Bach, Handel, Britten and Schnittke, plus the world premiere of an arrangementt of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas for orchestra (‘Stylus Scarlatti’) by the SCO’s Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld.
As was the procession of a few of the players to the foyer during the interval, heralded by a drum beat and led by the conductor himself playing a selection of early flutes and recorders. Perhaps this ingredient had more impact when it was a complete surprise to the audience and front of house staff, but it was still great fun, even if the SATB choral Spanish work handed out on hymn sheets for audience participation was a challenge too far for many ticket-holders.
Friday’s programme ended with a work from the conductor’s native Russia that was composed by Alfred Schnittke just eight years before Emelyanychev was born.
There is indeed “Baroque Inspiration” to be heard in Schnittke’s Gogol Suite, a sequence of eight short pieces based on short stories by the writer, but there is also the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. At other times, however, it sounds as much like the Merry Melodies of Warner Brothers cartoons or the pantomime of Spike Jones and his City Slickers.
With the players still gut-strung, the band included perhaps the most integrated use of electric guitar and bass guitar that any composer has achieved, a vast panoply of percussion from the whole toy box to tubular bells, and no fewer than four keyboard players. Simon Smith was imperious on concert grand, Stephen Doughty and Andrew Forbes covered harpsichord, celesta, and something invisible in between, and Emelyanychev himself handled the centre-stage prepared piano which played out the ominous “Testament” at the end.
The expression “multi-tasking” barely hints at what the SCO’s Principal Conductor brings to the job.
Keith Bruce
Portrait of Maxim Emelyanychev by Andrej Grilc; picture from City Halls foyer by Christopher Bowen
As chorus director and conductor Gregory Batsleer pointed out, the performers on stage in the restored, if slightly jaded, splendour of the Great Hall of Stirling Castle have an excellent view to the National Wallace Monument and the Ochil Hills which matched the heaven and skywards theme of most of the works he had programmed.
He conceded, however, that the audience is not in the same privileged position, so it was down to the choir to communicate that. Thankfully the SCO Chorus is capable of reaching heights other ensembles can only aspire to.
The two newest works in the programme were, perhaps, furthest from that theme as well as closest to home. Andrew Carvel is a tenor in the choir as well as a composer and wrote his setting of Psalm 150, which lists a suggested instrumentation for the Lord’s Praise, for a BBC broadcast from St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh. With its fluxing music, it is recognisably hymn-like, but a long way from congregational.
The SCO’s current Associate Composer, Jay Capperauld, contributed a setting of a contemporary poem by Fife-based Niall Campbell. The Night Watch is about the joyous sleeplessness of caring for a newborn, a sort of inverse lullaby which Capperauld has set to use the individual and sectional talents of the choir, especially the pure-toned sopranos.
Less than a month after the Dunedin Consort singers gave a memorable performance of Tarik O’Regan’s Scattered Rhymes, it was a joy to hear another of his choral pieces, The Ecstasies Above. Setting Edgar Allan Poe’s Israfel, which recognises the beauty of the archangel but also his otherworldliness, the piece is full of rhythmic challenges as well as shifts in dynamics. With instrumental support from a quartet of SCO players – violinists Gordon Bragg and Amira Bedrush-McDonald, violist Brian Schiele and cellist Philip Higham – those sopranos were once again on star form.
They did not have the whole show to themselves, however, and the full-voiced basses sounded remarkably Russian for John Tavener’s Syvati, the choir’s drones and Eastern intervals complemented by Higham’s cello from the minstrel’s gallery, from where he also played Tavener’s contemporaneous cello solo, Chant.
The other liturgical works in the programme were Roxanna Panufnik’s Kyrie after Byrd, inspired by the 16th century composer and less than a decade old, and the opener from James MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motets, from 2007 and ideally voiced to introduce the sound of the choir in this historic venue.
If there was an enticement for the uninitiated to buy tickets, it was in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, regularly voted the public’s favourite classical piece. Few, however, would have heard it in this arrangement by Paul Drayton, in which Bragg’s violin had a choral accompaniment and the instrumental soloist only had our full attention in the closing bars.
Using a brutally condensed version of the George Meredith poem that inspired the composer (fewer that a tenth of the lines of verse), the score is mostly wordless and demands a broad range of techniques from both the full choir and a number of individual voices within it. Like much else in the recital, it proved a demonstration of the technical mastery of the SCO Chorus.
Some end-of-term concerts are grander than others, and this one, in terms of its participants and musical content, was certainly top of the class. Featuring an orchestra that teamed the current cohort of students with alumni whose schooldays ended as long ago as the early 1980s, under the baton of cellist, teacher and leader of the Hebrides Ensemble Will Conway, and a choir that involved the entire school singing a new work by Sir James MacMillan, the star soloists included a trio for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto of violinist Colin Scobie, cellist Philip Higham and pianist Steven Osborne, all former pupils.
Yet there was a sense that the event needed to be grander than it turned out. It felt constrained by the dimensions of the venue, both physically and aurally, and the occasion – the Golden Jubilee of the establishment of St Mary’s as a proper academic establishment for the training of young musicians – seemed worthy of a bigger bash. The long saga of the school’s ambition to move from its present cramped accommodation in Edinburgh’s West End to a redeveloped Old Royal High School on Calton Hill, has perhaps taken its toll. Although that development is now on track, it is probably unlikely that even the youngest of the present pupils will still be around to see the move.
Nonetheless, St Mary’s cannot be accused of losing sight of the music in the course of embracing its bold building scheme. That campaign has been soundtracked by The Seven Hills Project, which commissioned seven composers to write a diversity of pieces, the common thread being new verses, themed on Edinburgh’s seven hills, written by Alexander McCall Smith. The 50th birthday commission was the new MacMillan piece, setting George Mackay Brown’s calendar poem The Flute in the Garden.
It is a challenging sing for a youth chorus, in which the orchestra is very much an equal partner, and the flute of the title a crucial voice. The loveliest moments occur, appropriately, in the summer months, with instantly recognisable evocations of the sounds of nature. It is not a long work, but surely one that other ensembles, vocal and instrumental, will be keen to get their teeth into.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise was a well-chosen work to follow the new piece, although also a tall order for young players, who rose splendidly to its challenges and enthusiastically added the required vocal punctuation. The concluding bagpipes appeared from the back of the hall in the hands of Brighde Chaimbeul, more usually a virtuoso on the bellows-powered smallpipes, and rarely seen playing standing up, never mind making a pacing entrance.
The concert ended with another world premiere in Judith Weir’s 50 Happy Bars, a measured fanfare/coda that revealed itself as an orchestration of the world’s best known birthday melody.
The first half of the programme had begun with the only piece that really suited the scale of the Queen’s Hall – Aaron Copland’s Quiet City. Conway’s small string ensemble was flanked by the two guest soloists – trumpeter Aaron Akugbo and the cor anglais of Katherine Bryer. As a piece it may have outgrown its theatrical origins, but it was the precision of this performance by all involved that made it such a good place to start.
The Triple Concerto, on the other hand, did seem a squeezed into the space, an impression amplified by an orchestral sound that was initially more (late) ‘Beethoveney’ than the work really wants. What was fascinating, so soon after hearing Benedetti, Kanneh-Mason and Grosvenor play it with the RSNO, was the very different approach of Scobie, Higham and Osborne. They were no less communicative as a trio, but there was no question that Higham had the leading role.
Never underestimate the individual virtuosity of orchestral musicians who sit more anonymously, week after week, amid the wider ranks of their respective bands. Here was a typical illustration: SCO principal cellist Philip Higham breaking ranks to feature in his orchestra’s latest digital presentation from Perth Concert Hall as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.
Tchaikovsky’s balletic concert piece – it’s the closest he got to writing a full-blown cello concerto – is exquisite and fanciful, as the title suggests. But that shouldn’t imply anything lightweight or superficial. As the opening orchestral gambit of this iridescent performance under SCO principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev asserted, here also is music of infinite character and substance.
It offered the perfect interpretational springboard for Higham, whose entrance established all the perfection, agility and poise that was to inform the ensuing variations. The nimble, airborne simplicity of the main theme, the natural zest that followed, even the sumptuous calm in Tchaikovsky’s more contemplative moments, were all effortlessly captured in a performance notable for its visual grace and instinctive musicality.
It was the centrepiece of a concert bookended by Schubert, whose music, Emelyanychev reminded us, should have been a focal theme in the originally-planned SCO season. A pairing of Schubert’s Symphony No 5 and the Entr’act No 3 from Rosamunde was telling proof as to why that was always such a good idea.
In a symphony indebted in its lyrical, spirited zeal to Mozart, Emelyanychev seemed in seventh heaven, light-footed and with delicate gestures that inspired the freshest of results from his players. There was spring-like effervescence in the opening Allegro, eliciting affectionate playfulness from the conversational woodwind. The free-flowing Andante con moto and breezy Menuetto then set the pace for a finale the went like the clappers and embraced dramatic turbulence as chilling as Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
No such pungency in the Rosamunde excerpt, which was all about eloquence and charm. There’s a gloriously ambient ring to the empty Perth hall acoustics that was fully embraced in this performance, evident in the poetic sheen and settled composure that coloured its every moment. Ken Walton
