Choral director Gregory Batsleer offered a compare-and-contrast programme as a preview of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's main attraction, Schubert’s Mass no. 5 in A flat major. Two brief reflective choral pieces and a double concerto prepared the way for the astonishing Schubert, a work with a fugue so complicated that the composer revised the score. Batsleer knows his singers so upped the challenge, raising the bar by choosing to tackle the original.
Can we even imagine a musical landscape without Bach as a major figure? Mendelssohn rekindled interest in the composer when he conducted a performance of the Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829. His own short choral setting Verleih uns Frieden, a prayer for peace, showed Lutheran influences, each of the three repetitions gaining momentum with woodwinds threading through the tapestry, from the earnest divisi cello and bass opening, the choir sounding warm and balanced.
Musical murkiness surrounds Bach’s Concerto in C minor for two violins which was reconstructed in 1920 as work for violin and oboe from his original double harpsichord concerto BMV1060 which may have been performed by two violins. SCO violin section leaders stepped up with Marcus Barcham Stevens taking the violin part and Stephanie Gonley taking the oboe line. A lithe and lively slimmed down SCO string section provided a firm base with breathing space, Jan Waterfield’s harpsichord adding subtle textures. The slow central movement had the soloists intertwining melodies in a glorious duet before the third movment erupted with its dancing rhythms, full of Baroque swaggering vigour and bite.
Schumann’s darkly luminous Nachtlied wove a spell with its night sky starry opening, Friedrich Hebble’s words laden with allegories of sleep, fear and acceptance of death. The singers were dreamlike at first, Batsleer deftly guiding his forces as they opened out to a moving central climax with trumpets and timpani adding weight before the work died away to soft pizzicato strings and a hopeful final clarinet.
Schubert could quickly dash off songs, but his Mass took him three years to write, and was famously rejected by the Royal Kapellmeister as not being in the style the Emperor liked. Masses can be solemn affairs, but while this work is reverential, it is also joyously uplifting. Rather than give his soloists arias, Schubert mostly uses his quartet as a punchy semi-chorus, here bass-baritone Callum Thorpe and tenor Thomas Walker providing hefty momentum, Idunnu Münch’s noble mezzo adding depth and demonstrative soprano Ruby Hughes topping it out finely.
A glowing choral Kyrie built on the woodwinds' theme with generous light and dark shading setting the tone, the quartet taking over for the warm central Christe eleison. Batsleer created an exciting swell of voices and players, the choral fireworks in the Gloria had him all but dancing for joy, the Scottish Chamber Chorus pinpoint accurate in timing and balance. Natural trumpets and horns added an exciting bite to the sound, but I really enjoyed the family of trombones having a busy night underpinning the many muscular choruses.
The “too difficult” fugue was an absolute thrill of a ride, the long wait building anticipation for the trumpets and timpani to finally come thundering in. It’s a work with many lyrical moments especially in the sombre parts of the Credo, Benedictus and start of the Agnus Dei, but the briskly jolly “Hosannas” carried exuberant positivity into the final Dona nobis pacem. Batsleer describes the Mass as a “bonkers work”, but it is clearly a neglected masterpiece.
