We’ve come to expect a concert like this every year from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra: one conducted by their Principal Conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, that stages a dialogue between music of the Baroque and modern periods. When those concerts work, they work really well, like a cleverly curated exhibition that demonstrates the influence of one artist on another, and there are usually some unadvertised items and some interval entertainment (which here ended in an audience singalong of Past time with good company).
It all comes down to programme choices, however, and while I could see what Emelyanychev was doing this year, I struggled to get excited about either Stravinsky’s Pulcinella or Poulenc’s Concert champêtre. No matter how often I hear about the importance of Stravinsky’s neoclassical period to the development of modern music, I just can’t summon any enthusiasm when Pulcinella appears on a programme, mostly because it’s fairly dull music that not even Stravinsky could render exciting. For me, his take on the 18th century feels like a coloured film has been put over a painting, draining the excitement from both the original and its reworking.
Poulenc’s harpsichord concerto is even harder to take because the composer created what amounts to his own pastiche which too often feels like a parody. The harpsichord’s main tune in the first movement, for example, is as dainty and tripping as though Poulenc wrote it while looking at a Fragonard painting; but to me it feels like a shepherdess statuette mass-produced as a tourist souvenir, a pastiche that’s too clever for its own good, and you have to wait until the middle of the finale before you get anything like a proper blast of energy.
None of this was the fault of the musicians, of course, and they negotiated Poulenc’s block-like writing effectively. At the harpsichord, Emelyanychev was amplified – which is surely cheating – but he played with effervescent skill. The orchestral texture bounced along next to it, as it did with Pulcinella, which featured some beautifully played solos and even a moment of comedy in the duetting double basses. Although this first half twinkled, sparkled and sometimes even shone, it left me almost completely cold.
I far preferred the real Baroque deal in the second half. The Vivaldi concerto they chose was for two violins, but is an unusual entry into L’estro Armonico because, after an opening explosion of showmanship, the violins largely retreated into the orchestral texture, only popping out for a dazzle every so often. That’s not to do down the focused playing of soloists Stephanie Gonley and Marcus Barcham-Stevens, who shared the limelight with a few fizzing grenades of virtuosity from principal cello Philip Higham; but it demonstrated the collegiate approach to music making that this orchestra does so well.
The sparks really flew in Rameau’s suite from Les Boréades, which felt like the moment towards which the whole concert had been moving. There was terrific weight to the sound, helped by the addition of natural horns, and the playing of the whole orchestra seemed to rise by a level for this sequence, demonstrated in the gorgeously silky descending scales of the Entrée d’Abaris and a final Contredanse that positively bubbled over. The whole thing felt propelled forwards by the spirit of the dance, with a pulse of genuine emotional energy in which it was impossible to avoid being swept up. If Monsieur Poulenc could have heard it, he may have learnt a thing or two.
