Tag Archives: SCO Chorus

SCO / SCO Chorus / Minasi

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City Halls Glasgow

Mozart’s Requiem will forever pose the question “what if?”. If only he’d finished it, what level of masterpiece would we have been gifted? What happened is the stuff of myth, bordering on conspiracy. 

In short, Mozart was dying in 1791 and desperately accepted a clandestine commission from one Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach via a mysterious agent. The Count, notorious for exercising ridiculous vanity projects in which he passed off such purchased works as his own, faced a dilemma when Mozart inconveniently died before completion. In a bid to fulfil the contract, Mozart’s wife charged his pupil Franz Süssmayr to finish the job, which is the version most commonly heard today, and which the SCO and SCO Chorus addressed to a packed City Halls on Friday.

These are forces that know their onions when it comes to Mozart. Gregory Batsleer’s choristers are a tight, gripping ensemble, even-toned throughout with just the right amount of pizazz, their compact numbers commensurate with the sleek, steely Classical machine that is the SCO. Even with a scoring that incorporates three trombones, it was remarkable to witness the elegant agility from that trio perfectly aligned to this performance’s sophisticated containment.

From Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi came a lead that was both urgent and passionate, rarely outstepping stylistic bounds. Where there was ravishing mystery in the opening bars and in many of those reflective sections within the Sequentia, there was also a living, breathing buoyancy enlivening the fugal Kyrie, belligerent Dies Irae and soul-stirring Offertorium. Subtleties in dynamic control gave voice to the most magical pianissimos, the Chorus’ verbal projection impressive at every level, the SCO forever attentive in support. 

Much was to be admired, too, in the solo vocal quartet, particularly distinguished by the cut-glass purity of tenor Julien Henric and affecting lyricism of bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch. Mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp and soprano Louise Alder may have been less-consistently matched, not always in perfect step with the exactitude of the prevailing performance style, but both found moments of blissful magic with which to compensate. Perhaps complicit, Minasi’s gestural tendency to over-conduct led to periodic glitches in the rhythmic flow.

What was really striking about this performance, though, was the extent to which it revealed the unmistakable depth of personality in Mozart’s writing – those bits he did write – that wasn’t always as evident with Haydn in the evening’s partner work, the older composer’s war-inspired Paukenmesse. 

There’s no doubting the merits of the latter, not least the quirky colouring in the closing Agnus Dei where timpanist Louise Lewis Goodwin’s wooden-sticked rat-tat-tats conjured up a valedictory martial air. The delivery – using mostly the same forces as the Mozart – was unquestionably sound and faithful to the score; it just seemed, in this case, a tad functional, like the short before the main feature, selling it more as an off-the-shelf offering from a dutiful composer than a rare masterpiece. 

Ken Walton

SCO: The Language of Eden

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City Halls, Glasgow

Had this sweeping, eloquent SCO programme featured only Jay Capperauld’s concise new oratorio The Language of Eden, it would still have been an altogether fulfilling experience. The Ayrshire composer’s tenure as the SCO’s associate composer has been one of the most visibly creative phenomenon in Scottish classical music of late. Each collaborative project, each new work, has exhibited a significant step forward for Capperauld, whose voice and facility are now representative of a mature and fertile creativity. His premieres are now highly-anticipated, not-to-be-missed occasions.

Of course, coming in at little over half-an-hour, there was considerably more to a concert in which The Language of Eden functioned as its magnificent finale. As the orchestra’s principal guest conductor Andrew Manze explained in his introductory spiel, the theme underlying the entire evening related not just to music’s relationship with language, but its subliminal function as a language is itself. 

We had Shakespeare – words from The Merchant of Venice – illuminated by Vaughan Williams in his moonlit Serenade to Music, its melting harmonies and liquid melodies gorgeously woven under Manze’s baton-less gesturing. The SCO and its mid-scale Chorus responded with sumptuous understatement which paradoxically heightened the music’s intoxicating spell.

That sense of relaxation rolled over into Elgar’s Serenade for Strings. Manze – himself a violinist – drew the loveliest of timbres and detailed tracery from the SCO strings: a wispy nonchalance in the opening Allegro; melodious charm in the Larghetto; and a luxuriant, ultimately glowing reserve in the final Allegretto. 

Equally autumnal was George Butterworth’s prophetic pre-First World War settings of six poems from E A Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, presented here in a tastefully generous orchestration by baritone Roderick Williams, who also took the solo role. In songs softly lamenting the futility of young lives lost before their time – the composer himself, at 30, was a casualty of the later 1914-18 French battlefields – Butterworth’s music draws equally on folkish naivety and sophisticated imagery.

Williams’ vocal delivery was smooth, lightly-nuanced and disturbingly calm, especially powerful in its emotional restraint, whether in the quiet pastoral reflection of Loveliest of Trees, the haunting folksong of The Lads in their Hundreds, or the spectral poignance of Is My Team Ploughing?. 

In the second half, Capperauld’s premiere was prefaced by an enticingly elemental performance of Haydn’s Representation of Chaos from his oratorio, The Creation. This made complete sense, given that The Language of Eden, composed to words by Uist-born poet Niall Campbell, is an imagined portrayal, amid the biblical creation story, of the birth of language. 

Adam, sung by Williams, is being “sculpted” by the collective “inhabitants” of Eden, who gift him the Four Elements as engines of the environment around him, and who motivate his ability to communicate through language, not least the innate power of music. 

The propulsive certainty underpinning Capperauld’s score was absolutely mind-blowing in this performance. Where a powerful aura of mystery prevailed, Manze drew also on a seething earthiness within – succinct and questioning in the opening scene-setter; atmospherically vivid and wildly animated in the dramatic depictions of Air, Earth, Fire and Water; quasi-religious as Adam became aware of the music within him; chillingly ritualistic in a fearful, ultimately thunderous portend to humanity’s approaching chaos (hideously pertinent in relation to current world affairs); and a soothing farewell steeped in idiomatic Scots flavouring.

The SCO Chorus were a vibrant presence, powerfully-voiced and physically comfortable with the marching-on-the-spot and breast-beating required of them. Williams, too, embraced his role with in-depth conviction. The SCO played its part with immaculate distinction. It was a veritable tour de force, Capperauld’s music exhilarating, often in the glittering manner of John Adams, hugely versatile in character, but most impressively contained within a singularity of purpose that had this audience on the edge of their seats.

Ken Walton

SCO & SCO Chorus / Emelyanychev

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City Halls, Glasgow

The clue was in the title. The odds of an SCO programme labelled Gloria! being anything less than euphoric and uplifting were slim. Maxim Emelyanychev and his band, with their in-house SCO Chorus never failed to deliver, but we shouldn’t leave Poulenc off the credits, whose mischievously seductive music dominated the longer first half.

Across the entire programme there were, in fact, two Glorias composed centuries apart by Poulenc and Vivaldi respectively, but as fascinating for their similarities as their fundamental differences. Both thrived on the flawless precision of the SCO Chorus, the stylistic adaptability of the SCO, a thrilling assortment of vocal soloists and the singularly-minded dynamism of conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. 

To whet the appetite, however, Emelyanychev had turned to a rarer Poulenc, the 1940s post-war Sinfonietta he wrote for the BBC celebrating the first anniversary of the erstwhile Third Programme. Bang and we are off: a fearsome explosion of Stravinsky-infused joy immediately capturing the mood and establishing a journey through which Poulenc frequently tempers the exuberance with breezy wit, elegiac schmalz, and a specific way with melody that tugs on the heartstrings. 

Emelyanychev grasped the seething ambiguity of the music, its pungent similarities at times to the  earlier Organ Concerto, the breezy joie de vivre of the second movement Scherzo, the spectral delicacy of the Andante cantabile, and the undisguised echoes of Tchaikovsky, even Dvorak, surfacing occasionally above the transient hubbub of a truly sparkling score. He got the very best from a visibly energised SCO.

It offered the ideal preparation for the same composer’s Gloria, the perfection of the ensuing performance – with its renewed allegiance to Stravinsky, this time owing much to A Symphony of Psalms – critical to its gripping success. Again, there was electrifying playing from the orchestra, at times screamingly brutal, at others liquid and ephemeral. The Chorus – if slightly overwhelmed at the very start by the band – quickly found its feet in a performance ranging from idyllic reverence to declamatory exultation, yet always within the bounds of crystalline homogeneity. 

Soprano soloist Anna Dennis was breathtaking, picking notes seemingly from nowhere with pinpoint accuracy in the Domine Deus, casting an otherworldly spell over the gorgeous Agnus Dei.

The remarkable thing about the Vivaldi performance was the complete transition of the players and singers to authentic Baroque-style performance, Emelyanychev now directing from the harpsichord. The same precision applied, but now with a silver purity (vibrato-less strings, ravishingly pure oboe, agile single trumpet, with organ and theorbo completing the continuo group) and stylish persona. 

It introduced further soloists – Dennis joined by Glasgow-born soprano Rachel Redmond for a spritely duelling account of Laudamus te, countertenor Alberto Miguélez Rauco bringing an alluringly fresh dimension to the line-up. Oboist José Masmano Villar took the limelight in the Domine Deus, Rex coelestis, spinning out the solo obligato with increasingly rapt ornamentation.

The SCO Chorus was again a distinguished, life-giving presence, appropriately so in a week that welcomed the news of chorus master Gregory Batsleer’s decision to extend his SCO contract till August 2028. Definitely something to sing about!

Ken Walton 

SCO: Mozart Gala

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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 

SCO / Elijah

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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 

SCO / Batsleer

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City Halls, Glasgow

The tune in the opening movement of the Bach concerto in this week’s Scottish Chamber Orchestra programme may be one of the more familiar by the composer, but remarkably it was probably also the only instantly recognisable melody in the entire concert – especially when the other composers were Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert.

The concert was chiefly a platform for the orchestra’s remarkable chorus and – conducting all bar the Bach – its director Gregory Batsleer. Few amateur choirs could tackle the repertoire, but the SCO Chorus made deceptively light work of it, particularly the Schubert Mass in A Flat that took up the whole of the second half.

It is a glorious showcase of choral singing, but a challenging one. At its heart is a setting of the full Latin text of the Credo, in which the four soloists only come on board for the Amen, and at the centre of that section there is a transition from the crucifixion to a belief in the resurrection that is as musically eloquent as in any mass setting of any era.

The Credo follows a Gloria that is an absolute corker of a choir piece, much more integrated with the singing of the four soloists, and with a fugue that Schubert was apparently persuaded to revise because it was deemed too tricky to perform. Batsleer and the SCO Chorus stuck with the original version.

Those soloists were a story in themselves, because contracted soprano Ruby Hughes became unwell after Thursday’s Queen’s Hall show and Emma Morwood – who is one of the choir’s vocal coaches – stepped in at the last minute, her voice leading off many of the quartet’s contributions. If she pushed her first entry in the opening Kyrie a bit, that was excusable. The blend with mezzo Idunnu Munch, tenor Thomas Walker and bass baritone Callum Thorpe gelled as the work progressed, and the Benedictus trio, with pizzicato cello accompaniment, was another memorable highlight of the score. It was Thorpe who sat that one out, but he has a beautifully precise, resonant instrument which there will be another opportunity to hear in Scottish Opera’s French music concert programme in March.

The choir’s contributions to the first half offered a contrast, opening with Mendelssohn’s hymn-like Verleih uns Frieden, chamber music in scale with the low tones of cello, bassoon, and bass underscoring the singers, and closing with Schumann’s Nachtlied, a masterclass in orchestration to compliment voices, from the horn, brass and timpani of the opening to the clarinet and oboe ornamentation later.

For all its melodic familiarity, the Bach in between was also rare fare, as the C Minor concerto was performed in a 1920 “reconstruction” for two violin soloists, rather than for harpsichord or violin and oboe. Directed by leader Stephanie Gonley, who also took the “oboe” part, leader of the SCO’s second violins Marcus Barcham Stevens was the other soloist. The main interest, however was in the radically different, and very precise, ensemble sound of the 18-piece string orchestra (plus harpsichord) in the outer movements. Bach the precursor was, as ever, also the palette-cleanser.

Keith Bruce

Pictured: Gregory Batsleer

SCO / Emelyanychev

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Perth Concert Hall

SCO chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev furthered his reputation in Perth this week as a musical maverick, conducting an all-Mendelssohn programme that sought to illuminate our understanding of the composer without recourse to gimmick. Nothing extreme, but he offered performances driven by the profoundest integrity, coloured by unceasing curiosity that unearthed gem after gem of interpretational insight.

That was even the case with the evergreen incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, some of it particularly familiar (the storybook Overture, luxurious Nocturne and jaunty Wedding March), some of it less so, not least those chorus and solo contributions that humanised the Song with Chorus and Finale. The presence of sopranos and altos from the SCO Chorus, joined by solo sopranos Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale, were a warming presence on the ample Perth stage.

Emelyanychev’s vision of the music was light and playful, ever conscious of the natural sparkle springing from Mendelssohn’s textural complexities. The “once upon a time” opening bars echoed Shakespeare’s Puckish mischief, their angelic chords sweetly nurtured by the flutes, immediately countered by the scuttling catch-me-if-you-can strings whose later comical donkey impersonations – are these a reference to Bottom’s whimsical alter ego as an ass? – erupted with infectious irreverence.

What seemed like a conscious choice to minimise string vibrato added to the overriding picture of a magical landscape, and in the brass the rounded, retro-presence of the ophicleide in combination with natural horns created an ethereal glow. The joy of this performance was enough to offset periodic mishits by the trumpets and horns.

Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony was the perfect aperitif, altogether more grounded than the gossamer sensitivities of the incidental music, but hardly without its own lustrous persona. Emelyanychev’s irrepressible enthusiasm made its mark immediately, both in the sprightliness of the tempi and the scintillating detail he visibly elicited. There was never a dull moment, not even when the ensemble’s absolute togetherness wobbled, as it did once or twice. Clearly Mendelssohn’s visit to Italy, which inspired the symphony, saw that country in its most dazzling light. 

Ken Walton 

SCO / Egarr

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SCO / Egarr

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

When the SCO Chorus last sang Handel’s Israel in Egypt in Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, under Dutch conductor Peter Dijkstra, it seemed to me that the work, with its six soloists, full brass and chamber organ, was too big for the venue. While it was a surprise to find that was six years ago to the week – the Covid-era prohibition on choral singing has confused recollection of concerts past – that impression was confirmed by Richard Egarr’s dynamic direction, from the harpsichord, of the oratorio in the Usher Hall on Thursday evening.

There are some odd things about Israel in Egypt, one of the composer’s earliest excursions into Bible story-telling for the concert platform. Even in an age when recreation of original performance scores has become the thing, Part 1 is still usually consigned to the dustbin of history and we hear Handel’s revised version of Parts 2 and 3 with his addition of some arias for the soloists.

Those six voices – a stellar line-up of sopranos Rowan Pierce and Mary Bevan, mezzo Helen Charlston, tenor James Gilchrist and basses Ashley Riches and Peter Harvey here – are still far from overworked. Handel chose texts from Exodus and Psalms to tell the story of God’s chosen people, and the chorus therefore has the most to sing.

The SCO choir, refreshed by a good number of younger voices, did a superb job across all its sections, without a weak link in voice pitch, and crisp and clear through the entire evening. Egarr treated all the musicians on the Usher Hall stage equally, and the ensemble sound the collective made was superb, quite startlingly so in the combination of singing and instrumental playing in the hailstones of the plagues in Part 2.

From Gilchrist and Charleston’s almost “Once upon a time” storytelling approach to the opening, this Israel in Egypt was a captivating yarn. In Part 3, after the interval, the other soloists took their brief slots in the spotlight with style, Bevan and Pierce combining beautifully in duet only to be ungallantly upstaged by Harvey and Riches with a belligerent, duelling “The Lord is a man of war” that provoked its own ripple of applause.

Not for the first time at Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert, the final credit has to go Richard Egarr for bringing all of the elements together into a wonderful coherence. He was alive to all the contrasts in the score, digging into the platform with his fist on “He smote all the first-born” before gently shepherding the chorus and lyrical reed players in the chorus that immediately follows, and leading a trio of string principals from the keyboard in the continuo.

Handel was still experimenting when he wrote Israel in Egypt, with the triumph of Messiah a few years off, but in this performance, with all its meticulous details and ensemble endeavour, it was very much more than a work-in-progress.

Keith Bruce