East Neuk Festival Closing Concert

Bowhouse, St Monans, 30/6/2024

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanychev (piano/conductor)

The sold-out final concert of this year’s East Neuk Festival took place in the surprisingly warm acoustic of the barnlike Bowhouse, St Monans on the breezy but sunny late afternoon of 30th June.  A festive atmosphere reigned, aided by the venue’s refreshment facilities. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra was directed by its Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, who was the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.22 in E-flat major K.482.  The other major work in the programme was Beethoven’s Symphony No.7.

Before the Mozart, Maestro Emelyanychev performed a solo piano improvisation in fast triple time, incorporating stylistic elements of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with not a little mischievous humour. Twice the music paused as a sustained chord on the piano died out to silence (which of course takes much longer on the modern instrument than on the classical one), Max turning to the audience, explaining “innocently” why he was waiting, in a manner not unlike Victor Borge.

The improvisation led without a break into the fanfare that opens the concerto, settling into a lyrical theme on winds, with the lovely sound of the natural horns and trumpets and the wee timpani adding to the charm of Mozart’s larger than usual orchestra.  After the second theme, Emelyanychev’s entry had a fluid tempo, with the strings pared down to a single instrument on each line for added delicacy, a practice that was to be a recurring feature of the playing in both the Mozart and the Beethoven.  The wind playing was superb as ever, while Emelyanychev’s pianism was characterful and mischievous. The cadenza was driven and compelling, the coda playful. The slow movement opened in a minor key mood of Sturm und Drang, with nice phrasing on the violins. The wind band had a brief wee concerto of their own in the major. The piano’s ornamented variation of the opening theme was supported by strings, followed by a gorgeous major key dialogue of flute and bassoon. Angry string interjections, pacified by the solo piano, anticipated the quasi-operatic drama of the slow movement of Beethoven’s 4th concerto. A sad melody on clarinet and flute was answered by piano and bassoon.  The magical timbre of single instruments on each string line helped to steer the pathos in the final bars, the cadential line in the minor. The finale of No.22, with its dancing playfulness and irrepressible joy, is destined to be my favourite for a long time. Emelyanychev freely ornamenting any repeated phrase, answered by Andrê Cebrián’s flute doing likewise, was deliciously virtuosic.  The operatic arioso central section of the movement featured more superb wind and string playing in dialogue with the soloist. The return to the opening dance with added mischief led to a wild (improvised?) cadenza that I’ve not heard before and the familiar cheeky coda.  Perfect.

This will have been a good summer for Beethoven’s 7th.  At the end of May, in the Perth Festival, we had the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under Steven Mercurio; the SCO with Maxim Emelyanychev closed the East Neuk Festival with it and it will be the last work on the programme of their concert in Callander Kirk on 6th July.  In the Bowhouse, fresh, clear, crisp tone characterised the introduction of the first movement.  Single-instrument string lines and daring rubato made the transition to the dotted rhythms of the movement proper very dramatic.  Pauses were held long enough and crescendos built to add a thrilling sense of mystery.  The ‘slow’ movement had a lovely ebb and flow in the main theme, with magical sotto voce string playing.  The counter-melody’s first appearance on the violas was delicious and the violas remained vital to the texture throughout the movement.  Crystal clarity of the detail was thrilling also.  The fugato section built magnificently in tension and volume. The Scherzo was rhythmic and playfully driven, with great use of dynamic contrasts.  The horns and winds in the Trio were excellent and exploited fully the Bowhouse’s acoustic, equally elegant at lower volume when the Trio makes a second appearance, a mischievous tenuto dramatizing the false start third time round.  My personal history with the finale is longer than my memory (I am told I used to bounce up and down to it as a baby). The tempo was not very driven and far too fluid for my personal taste, robbing it of much of its uncompromising rhythmic rage.  Parts were almost danceable, which I think is not what Beethoven was going for at all.  The dynamic contrasts and the sforzandi were excellent, but I couldn’t warm to the slowing down and speeding up. Overall, at the end of an otherwise perfect concert this was a let-down.  Like your team holding their opponents to a goalless draw and losing on penalties. I hope (against hope) that it won’t be the same on 6th July.  Fingers crossed.