A Celebration of Dvorak

Usher Hall 26th September 2024

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor, Steven Isserlis cello

On a chilly September evening a large enthusiastic audience are in the Usher Hall for the Opening Concert of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 2024-2025 season.  Appropriately, Principal Cellist Philip Higham introduces the all-Dvořák programme which includes the Cello Concerto played by Steven Isserlis. After last season’s 50th anniversary celebrations, he looks forward an exciting new season in which Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev will conduct nine concerts and new Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze a further five.  Tonight’s programme, he suggests, has a suitably champagne opening in the ‘Carnival Overture’.

Nearly sixty musicians are on stage, in a more conventional orchestral layout than Maxim Emelyanychev often requires, except that the four double basses take their elevated places at the centre back of the stage.  In the middle layer, four horns on the left balance out the brass on the right, two trumpets, three trombones and a tuba, with the excellent SCO woodwind section between them.  A closer look at the programme indicates an interesting switch in string personnel: Marcus Barcham Stevens, Principal Second Violin leads the orchestra tonight while Zurich Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Second Violin, Kio Seiler, the eldest in a Japanese family of string players – four of her sisters have their own string quartet – is Guest Leader of the second violins.

As the music starts, our attention is drawn to the trio of percussionists on the left of the double basses. Iain Sandilands, Alasdair Kelly and Colin Hyson playing cymbals, triangle and tambourine dominate the brassy exuberant first section.  Dvořák said that the work represented a “lonely contemplative wanderer (who) reaches a city at nightfall where a carnival is in full swing – the clangour of instruments and unrestrained hilarity of songs and dance tunes”.  Both sides of the narrative are important as these initial high-jinks give way to a reflective walk in nature in which the woodwind, especially cor anglais (Katherine Bryer) and the harp (Eleanor Hudson) create a charming interlude. All three works in tonight’s programme date from the composer’s mature musical period, in which he not only introduced melodies from his homeland but was interested in contextualising them in the countryside they sprang from.  Eventually, the spirited carnival can’t be held back and the tambourine, played discreetly on the lap until now, is finally unleashed with some flamboyant whirls in the finale!  The percussionists receive the first cheers of the night.

Steven Isserlis has been a popular collaborator with the SCO for many years.  His friendship with Maxim Emelyanychev dates, a recent Scotsman interview tells us, from 2019, when the cellist visited Glyndebourne for a performance of ‘Rinaldo’ in which his two sisters were in  the orchestra.   They persuaded him to meet their conductor, Emelyanychev, for lunch.  Later in the audience, Isserlis was entertained to hear an unmistakable burst of Elgar’s Cello concerto during Emelyanychev’s harpsichord continuo.

The ‘Cello Concerto’ was written in 1895 when Dvorak had been in the United States for three years and its sweeping melodies seem as much a celebration of the wide spaces the New World as a nostalgia for Bohemia. The first movement opens quietly in the woodwind with a melody which is rapidly taken up by the rest of the orchestra in a dramatic crescendo for horns, trumpets, trombones and timpani. This is followed by another theme starting in horns and clarinet before the soloist enters.  The first movement’s optimistic energy from orchestra and cellist gives little forewarning of the angst which is to come.  The beautiful second movement with its collaboration between cello, flute and cor anglais has more introspection, as it incorporates a song which was a favourite of Dvořák’s sister-in-law, Josefina, who, he had recently heard, was gravely ill at home.  She had been his first love, and although we don’t need to know the story to appreciate the music, the third movement makes more sense if we realise that he revised it after his return to Bohemia shortly before Josefina’s death. The last movement’s martial themes seem to move along toward a conclusion before a slower more indecisive passage for cello and orchestra reintroduces the song from the second movement.  Although the movement ends with a brisk upbeat ending for cello and orchestra, the sense of disruption lingers.

Dvořák strongly resisted any attempt by the Czech soloist, Hanus Wihan, for whom he wrote the piece, to include a cadenza in the final movement. He wrote beautifully for the instrument, and Isserlis’ s splendidly committed performance brings out the tensions as well as the beauties of the work.  Much of the pleasure lies in the many opportunities for his cooperation, firstly with the warm string section, and also with the contrasting winds.  There’s deserved applause for Isserlis, the conductor and the SCO before the cellist plays an introspective encore to see us to the interval.   

Symphony No 8, written in 1889, shows a popular composer refusing to rest on his laurels and experimenting with the symphonic form. David Kettle, in his programme notes, calls it a “fascinating amalgam of a symphony and a tone poem’.   In contrast to the pain the composer felt during the writing of the ‘Cello Concerto’, in this symphony, composed in the idyllic setting of a state-sponsored rural retreat, he was intent on celebrating his love of Bohemia and its music. The chorale-style opening and folk themes for whole orchestra are continually interrupted by birdsong on flute and piccolo, with conductor and orchestra giving as much attention to these reflective opportunities as to the expansive sections for full orchestra.  While tonight’s resounding brass and timpani make a fine noise when required, Emelyanychev is prepared to pare back the sound so that, even in this large concert-hall, we appreciate the more intimate moments in the strings and woodwind, which also occur in the adagio second movement and the finale.  The lovely waltz-time third section is a light airy dance.  Eventually the promise of the finale’s opening trumpet fanfare and its intermittently rhymical outbursts can’t be denied, and the symphony ends with an accelerando leading to an explosive finish which the audience and orchestra enjoy so much that Maxim Emelyanychev gives us an actual encore – the reprise of the last three minutes to see us happily homewards.

The Principal Conductor is also in charge of the next two concerts, next week’s Mozart Gala in the Usher Hall with the SCO Chorus in the ‘Great’ Mass in C, and the Queen’s Hall annual treat of ‘Baroque Inspirations’ on 10th October, which he directs from the harpsichord. Some tickets are still available for both performances.