I love concert programmes like this; evenings that pose questions through musical juxtapositions and invite you to hear things you wouldn’t notice from the pieces in isolation. They’re dashed hard to pull off, though, and this Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert was decidedly unbalanced in what worked and what didn’t. Put simply, the post-1900 composers didn’t sound anything like as good as the Baroque composers who inspired them.
My ears were twitching right from the opening notes of Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia. Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev had chosen a string orchestra of only 15 members to go alongside the four soloists and the smaller ensemble of nine, and they were playing on gut strings with only a little vibrato. The effect was to make the music sound so thin as to be almost parched in places. There were precious few gains in transparency, and entirely lost was the music's sense of being enveloped in an expanding space. The opening, in particular, where that huge aural landscape opens up, together with a sense that anything could happen, felt empty and understated, and the whole piece might have been played well but left me feeling unsatisfied, almost cheated.
I’d say the same about Philip Glass’s Harpsichord Concerto, though all the more so because, like a lot of Glass’s work, the piece’s musical building blocks felt thin and overused, dragging out a small quantity of inspiration. The chromatic, honkytonk finale lightens the mood, but still ends up chasing its tail. Emelyanychev’s improvisatory opening flourish seemed to suggest something free and lovely that quickly got caught up in Glass’s chugging machine which repeated itself rather too much.
Respighi’s first suite of Ancient Airs and Dances raised the game somewhat, particularly in the beautifully played solo lines of the “Villanella” and the finale which balanced hurdy-gurdy weight against quick-fire delicacy. However, to me the opening “Balletto” sounds irredeemably like clumsy parody music to be used in a period drama and I can’t hear it without thinking of powdered wigs and Restoration fops.
Things improved dramatically after the interval with a Corelli Concerto Grosso that demonstrated Historically Informed Practice at its best. The strings remained wiry and lean but here, they were warm and inviting where the Vaughan Williams had been austere and forbidding. The opening chords took their sweet time as they unfolded in the Preludio, and there was a buzzing sense of to-and-fro throughout the piece while still finding sweetness of tone in the central Andante Largo.
The main novelty was Telemann’s Concerto for 2 chalumeaux. The chalumeau is a wheezy cross between a clarinet and a recorder, but the most remarkable thing about it was how quiet it sounded! The tone of the two soloists ranged from soft to barely audible and the whole audience seemed to lean forward in focused concentration to tune into it. Hats off to soloists Katherine Spencer and William Stafford (the SCO’s regular clarinettist), who showed admirable agility in an instrument they can’t often get the opportunity to showcase in public.
And there were no complaints about the concluding Bach concerto, reconstructed for three violins from the extant score for three harpsichords. The three soloists were drawn from the orchestra and shared the directing honours with Emelyanychev at the harpsichord, achieving a joyous sense of energy and forward movement in the outer movements, pausing for introspection only in the pained central slow movement.
