Tag Archives: Tara Erraught

SCO: Mozart Matinee

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City Halls, Glasgow

It wasn’t unusual for Mozart, in presenting concerts of his own music, to intersperse the movements of a major work with operatic arias, the odd overture, even bits of other major multi-movement works. He did so in Vienna in 1783, when the Haffner Symphony was split up to host concert arias, a couple of piano concertos, even two movements from the substantial Posthorn Serenade.

By all accounts that was a famously lengthy affair, unlike Friday’s Mozart Matinee by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which adopted the aforementioned Serenade as its spinal column, with internal diversions ranging from an overture to assorted arias sung by Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, but doing so within the durational strictures of a standard two-hour concert. 

It was a refreshing scenario, not just for the lateral curiosity of its concept, but in the way it gave our ears a welcome breathing space within a luxuriantly lengthy piece. Bear in mind, the Posthorn was written for an academic graduation day, so may well have been regarded as background noise to some excitable student buzz. 

Mozartian muzak then? Absolutely not. This performance in particular, expertly directed with pincer-like extraction from the fortepiano by former SCO bassoonist (now highly-regarded conducting star) Peter Whelan, delved deep into the colourful vitality of the score. He opened with the first two movements, a wholesome and dramatic symphonic Adagio-Allegro complemented by a Minuetto rich in contrast and featuring the first of many assorted “concertante” showcases – flute and violin – that add lustre to the seven-movement Serenade. 

A direct segue into the aria Soffre il mio cor from a 14-year-old Mozart’s early opera Mitridate, rè di Ponto introduced the versatile Erraught. In this instance, while her technical virtuosity and vocal clarity was remarkable, a certain harshness affected this notably high-pitched piece.

Then it was back to the Posthorn for some classily consorting woodwind in the Concertante and a breezy Rondo that veered wickedly towards Rossini in its final moments. Erraught closed the first half with Parto, Parto from La clemenza di Tito, joined front stage by SCO principal clarinettist Maximiliano Martin in what amounted to a compelling, ultimately spectacular virtuoso dialogue. 

Opening the second half of the concert with the bristling overture to Der Schauspieldirektor was the perfect reawakening after a leisurely interval, a shot of adrenalin that fed neatly – given the commonality of key – into Temerari sortite … Come scoglio from Mozart’s Così fan tutte. Expressing Fiordiligi’s abandonment, Erraught was a tour de force, her now glowing presence feeding vociferously off the music’s febrile agility.

She was to make one more appearance beyond the quietening anguish of the Posthorn’s Andantino, in two contrasting excerpts from The Marriage of Figaro: firstly the Countess’ idyllic Dove sono, Erraught more naturally at ease with the opening recitative’s inherent drama than the long, breathless lyricism of the main aria; then in Susanna’s Guinse alfin il momento …. Deh vieni, non tardar, a role she is clearly in tune with, and with singing that was remarkable for its touching and tender expressiveness.

Old Copper Posthorn

Why is Mozart’s Posthorn Serenade so named? The answer was eventually to reveal itself in the penultimate Minuetto, where principal trumpet Peter Franks laid down his regular natural trumpet to pick up a gleaming modern-day replica of the functional instrument used in Mozart’s time to announce the arrival of the mail coach. 

What resembled a gold-plated yard of ale sounded just as the composer intended, rough and ready, so as to make its primitive mark against the orchestra’s polished refinement. Initially at extreme variance to the tuning around it, Marks’ brief but heroic championing of the parping hybrid inched towards a common pitch. The cuckoo-in-the-nest effect was not lost. Normality was restored in a regular Finale, a lithe and joyous conclusion to a well-considered, stylishly executed, and satisfyingly original programme. 

Ken Walton

EIF: La clemenza di Tito

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Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Although he made a very brief one of opposition to the war in Ukraine at the beginning of March 2022, no-one looks to the SCO’s Russian Principal Conductor for political statements. Maxim Emelyanychev is a musician with every fibre of his being: “I live for the creation of music and art” he said in that same bulletin.

Nonetheless, it would be easy to see a message to belligerent leaders across the world in his odd choice of La clemenza di Tito for the third of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s concert performances of Mozart Opera’s at the Edinburgh Festival.

Not so many years ago the merciful titular Roman emperor, prepared to forgive betraying consorts as readily as would-be assassins, was seen as a bit of a sap in the canon of opera heroes; in 2025 his lack of vindictiveness looks like something we could use a deal more of.

That’s not the only reason that La clemenza is rarely seen as of the same rank as The Magic Flute and Cosi fan tutte, the operas Emelyanychev and the SCO have presented in the last two years. Dating, like the Flute and the Requiem, from the last year of the composer’s life, it was composed at astonishing speed to a lucrative commission from Prague, is thought to contain some recitatives that he farmed out to a pupil, and has had a very uneven performance history since 1791.

This EIF performance featured the unmistakable roar of the RAF Red Arrows adding a flypast to the Castle Esplanade’s Tattoo around fifteen minutes in, but everything else was under the firm, charismatic direction of the conductor, whose Mozart readings are now easily escaping the long shadow cast by the SCO’s partnership with Sir Charles Mackerras.

Emelyanychev worked his socks off in this concert, playing eloquent fortepiano continuo as well as directing orchestra and chorus and – just as assiduously – the cast of soloists.

And what a terrific cast he had. The opening partnership of mezzo Angela Brower as Sesto and soprano Tara Erraught as Vitellia – dramatic, full of character and powerfully sung – only hinted at the riches to come, even if those two deserved the prize laurels at the end. A little later in Act One, the uncannily parallel duet by Maria Warenberg’s Annio and Hera Hyesang Park’s Servilia is one of the score’s best tunes and the singers made the most of it.

If bass Pater Kalman’s Publio has an onstage musical partner it is not Tito but the Chorus, he the voice of the Senate and they that of the citizens. If he was authoritative, with a nice suggestion of perplexity at turns of events, Gregory Batsleer’s SCO Chorus was as marvellous as it reliably is, to the extent of prompting the wish that they had had more to do.

More of an unknown quantity in Scotland – although he will sing Germont at Covent Garden next year – was tenor Giovanni Sala, who brought a troubled vivacity and palpable vexation to his portrayal of Tito, as well as a very fine voice that was never at all strained by the demands of the score.

Those are considerable on the soloists, but Brower and especially Erraught were more than equal to the huge vocal range that they were required to demonstrate.

There may still be elements of the plot of La Clemenza that are hard to swallow, but that is true of many operas. Emelyanychev and this ensemble made a cast iron case for the music being of the very first rank.

Keith Bruce

SCO / Whelan

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City Halls, Glasgow

When the main man pulls out, you’re snookered. It was, of course, nobody’s fault that violinist Colin Scobie had to call off his solo appearance in last week’s SCO programme, but that’s not the main man being referred to. 

As a consequence of Scobie’s unfortunate withdrawal, the Violin Concerto No 3 by the hitherto unsung 19th century Edinburgh-based, Polish-Lithuanian emigre Felix Yaniewicz had to be pulled – a bit of a blow when the whole programme was designed around the composer’s symbolic and significant inclusion. 

The original intention was a selection of music representative of Yaniewicz’s time and influence as a key mover and shaker in post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, where he was organiser of the illustrious Edinburgh Musical Society concerts, and co-founder in 1815 of the short-lived Edinburgh Musical Festival, a notable precursor to the annual August jamboree the city enjoys today.

With the main orchestral works remaining in place, and the last-minute services of Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught secured to sing a single song by Yaniewicz contextualised alongside others by Tommaso Giordani, Mozart and JC Bach, much of that intention was maintained. We were reliving something of the presentational style and content that 19th century Edinburgh concert-goers would have experienced.

How that might have appealed to a Glasgow audience rather spoke for itself. There was a pitiful turnout, but those who did make the effort witnessed something that was daintily charming in parts, thrillingly virtuosic in others, though when it came to the A-list composers, true class proved its worth.

At the helm was former SCO principal bassoon, Peter Whelan, now making significant headway internationally as a conductor, especially in earlier repertoire. He made an immediate impression in the opening overture from Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the incessant, chirping piccolo and Janissary-style percussion glittering like exotic musical bling. 

Erraught’s first set was initially disappointing, a rather hesitant and inconsistent Caro Mio Ben by Giordani followed by a more settled performance – for all the music itself is routinely crafted – of Yaniewicz’s Go Youth Belov’d. These are intimate songs, a quality Erraught strived hard to sustain, but she seemed infinitely more at ease in Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate. Its dazzling, extrovert acrobatics found Erraught in her natural, opulent comfort zone. 

Returning in the second half for Giordani’s Queen Mary’s Lamentation and JC Bach’s classy arrangement of the traditional Scots song, The Broom of Cowdenknowes, Erraught found something of the composure that had escaped her initial performances. The latter song, in particular, had a melting appeal that earned an emotive sigh from an appreciative audience.

Whelan, meantime, upped the temperature in a couple of orchestral curiosities of the time: the flamboyant Overture in C (essentially a miniature symphony) by Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie, a Fifer known as much for his drinking prowess as his carefree adoption of the musical principles of the Mannheim School, vividly demonstrated in this hearty performance; and Mozart’s modernising arrangement of Handel’s Overture to Alexander’s Feast, lovingly shaped by Whelan and the orchestra.

The concert ended with Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, its bullish eccentricities integrated tastefully within a bright, zestful, at times deliciously poetic interpretation. By which point, any lingering disappointment over the programme changes were resolutely dismissed.

Ken Walton