There didn’t seem to be much of an organising theme to the repertoire choices in this BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra programme at the Edinburgh International Festival, and I confess I went in with a slightly “meh” attitude: it’s a local orchestra; it’s nearly the end of the festival; impress me! As it turns out, however, they did. This proved a marvellous meeting of musical minds, not least because conductor Karina Canellakis knew exactly how to get the best out of the musicians she was working with.
From the opening roar of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, there was a terrific sense of barely constrained energy; the riotous musical chemistry impressively focused, with a huge palette of colours drawn from the orchestra. The percussive explosions of the first two movements sent a wave of vibrancy through the players (and singers) before subsiding into the rocking lullaby of the third, with beautiful soft strings of comfort both there and in the central Psalm 23. The Edinburgh Festival Chorus, not always the most precisely focused group of singers, sang with pinprick precision and bags of character. The festival’s Rising Stars of Voice made a small but excellent contribution to the quartet singing, and countertenor Hugh Cutting threatened to steal the show with a middle movement solo that showed the advantages of having an adult rather than a boy treble in this part: a powerful voice and bags of stage presence, with compelling directness and knowing maturity to both music and text.
Before that, an altogether more meditative spirituality came to the fore in Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliées, a meditation on the composer’s Catholicism that’s a heady haze of spiritual intensity and empathetic sensuality, interrupted by explosive violence and self-lacerating guilt. Something for everyone, then! The unison string tone of the opening – and, for that matter, the emaciated harmony of the ending – was simultaneously eerie and entrancing, very strange but utterly beguiling, with the winds and brass commenting from a distance as though stunned.
Petrushka also benefited from a terrific sparkle to the fair scenes, the crowds coming to life in all their extraordinary variety through orchestral ebullience that was as bright as a button, rich with vigour and full of detail, particularly in the character dances of the last part. If there’s a criticism then it’s that the ghostly elements were every bit as bright and therefore nowhere near as spooky as they could have been. Insufficient contrast meant that Petrushka’s love scene felt very straight, and the Moor’s dance felt cheeky rather than threatening. Still, this was first-rate playing and insightful conducting that more than delivered the goods.