United Kingdom Mendelssohn: Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale (sopranos), sopranos and altos of the SCO Chorus, Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor). Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 2.3.2023. (SRT)
Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 ‘Italian’; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Overture & Incidental music
Who would you title as essentially the most underrated composer of the mainstream classical canon? Not an unjustly uncared for feminine composer whose music is simply now coming to gentle, nor a Romanian baroque virtuoso who wrote dozens of mandolin concertos however who nobody has heard of for hundreds of years. No: a well-known composer whose title all people is aware of and of whose music it could be simple to search out many recordings, however who doesn’t get the credit score he’s due?
For me that’s simple: Mendelssohn. He was the kid prodigy to beat all baby prodigies – even Mozart! – and each music-lover each is aware of his work and says they find it irresistible; however his music is simply programmed sometimes and he doesn’t fill halls in something near the best way that his fellow early nineteenth-century German composers do. That may be a part of the rationale why this all-Mendelssohn live performance was performed to an Usher Hall that was solely a couple of quarter full. Come, on folks: get up to what you might be lacking!
More idiot the stay-at-home-ers, although, as a result of the individuals who did present up bought an absolute deal with. It is at all times particular when Maxim Emelyanychev conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and this live performance was stuffed with moments that had me smiling from ear to ear, proper from the opening burst of the Italian Symphony, which was just like the popping of a cork from a bottle of prosecco. Emelyanychev is a superb musical technician who thinks deeply in regards to the sound he desires and constructs it with painstaking care. That extends to the place each musician sits, tonight with basses excessive up on the again centre and bassoons subsequent to horns, or the devices they use, with intestine strings throughout the board and pure brass and timpani.
The outcomes converse for themselves and, importantly, there may be by no means any sense of cookie-cutter uniformity. The predominant theme of the primary motion, for instance, shone like a ray of sunshine, violins taking part in with breezy vibrato and carefree ease. The second, however, was all however stripped of vibrato, including a pang of unease to the funereal procession, and the pure brass and timps reduce proper by the feel within the minor key passage of the third motion’s trio. Everything sounded rigorously ready and fantastically delineated, together with the skin-tight finale which was breathless however at all times brilliantly managed.
Period devices deliver positive aspects and losses, after all. The wheezy ophicleide added an additional honk to the massive orchestral moments of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the total brass contingent sounded fantastically ceremonial within the wedding ceremony march. Some of the horn notes within the Nocturne, however, sounded unavoidably squashed in order that lots of that motion’s consoling magnificence bought misplaced within the forest. However, the fairy music sounded much more daringly unusual on gut-stringed violins, performed with stunning delicacy, and the winding down of the sleepy ultimate bars was bewitching. So, too, was the singing of the women of the SCO Chorus and, much more so, the fantastically wealthy soprano of voices of Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale.
If something, Emelyanychev appeared unusually properly behaved on the rostrum tonight. There have been no huge gestures or dazzling surprises. Instead, we bought a rigorously constructed and fantastically thought-about exposition of Mendelssohn’s attractive scores, which from any orchestral group could be fairly darned terrific. The actual fact that I’m noticing this displays how constantly Emelyanychev knocks it out of the park with a contemporary revelation or a brand new concept, and it undoubtedly isn’t a grievance. After all, we should always by no means let the beautiful be the enemy of the merely glorious.
Simon Thompson