In February 2023 this same team – Aylen Pritchin, Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – played Brahms’ Violin Concerto. It was the best thing they did that season, and one of the finest performances of the concerto that’d I’d ever heard. My hopes were high, therefore, for them reuniting in the very different soundscape of Prokofiev. Happily, those hopes were fulfilled.
Well, mostly. Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor doesn’t have anything like Brahms’ level of heart-filling grandeur, so there isn’t as much for a violinist of Pritchin’s lyrical intensity to get his teeth into. He wrung every ounce of emotional feeling out of what was there, though. From the tentative, hesitant opening to the ebullient conclusion, he was very much the central actor in the drama, even standing in the front middle of the stage as though to make the point. His violin sound could be silvery, delicate, blustering or assertive as Prokofiev’s score required, and the way he slipped between characters was terrifically impressive, his icy persona seeming to melt into an ardent lover part-way through the first movement.
He was at his finest in the long, long line of melody that soared atop the slow movement, singing and shining with an enormous dynamic range, unafraid to play so quietly that at times he disappeared inside the orchestra’s sound. He then seemed to toy with chaos in the finale’s chromatic dash, sparking off Emelyanychev (his former classmate at the Moscow Conservatory) as they seemed to dare each other on to something ever more exciting and flash.
There isn’t much Prokofiev that an orchestra of the SCO’s size can play, and the musicians made the most of the concerto, bringing the opening to shadowy life, and picking out their second movement accompaniment with gentle humour. They also sounded terrific in the composer’s Classical Symphony, for which they’re pretty much the perfect size. This brought brilliant transparency, which was especially beneficial in the outer movements, and they also played in Classical period style, with no vibrato, making the sound an odd tonal hybrid of the 18th and 20th centuries. It was strangely pleasing, however, and the strings were still capable of summoning up gorgeous warmth in both the theme and the cushioning accompaniment of the Larghetto second movement.
Much of that style transferred to their playing of Brahms’ Second Symphony, for which they used 19th-century brass and strings with selectively deployed vibrato. With Emelyanychev at the helm this made the music sound freshly minted, with a golden thread of warmth running through it. Only occasionally, such as in the violins’ lyrical theme in the finale, could you have wished for a little more body, and every so often a few cracked notes reminded the audience of just how much more difficult 19th-century horns are to play. In every other respect, however, this was a treat.
