EIF: Nicola Benedetti and Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Usher Hall – 22/08/22
A Game of Two Halves
As I took my seat in the Usher Hall last night, I was reminded that my first concert review for the Edinburgh Music Review was also of the SCO and Maxim Emelyanychev, way back in the month before the original lockdown in 2020. Much has changed!
This was an excellent concert, only slightly marred by eccentric programming. Max Bruch’s astonishing violin concerto took up the first half, played wonderfully by Nicola Benedetti. Lasting only 25 minutes, it seemed meagre fare for a concert at the highest price range, but at least we got a lovely encore of the Meditation from Massenet’s ‘Thaïs’, and a bit of chat from Ms Benedetti. The second half consisted of excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s ballet, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, but only the first two Acts and the Prelude. Of the final Act and the denouement, there was nothing, which seemed on paper somewhat perverse, and so it proved in the performance. This half seemed to go on forever, but as I had surmised, the encores came from Act 3, the Apothéose at the end, and the Pas de Quatre with variations from earlier in the act. This sort of rounded things off, but it was all rather messy.
The Usher Hall was completely sold out for this concert, including the Organ Gallery, which clearly reveals the Benedetti factor, and huge cheers greeted the arrival of our heroine, looking stunning in a white jumpsuit. As the Festival’s new Director this was a positive sign of her independence and a clear demonstration that she is a woman to be reckoned with.
She is also a sublime violinist, as she showed in the Bruch concerto. Like all warhorses, the Bruch is famous because it is so good, and when you get a performance such as Benedetti and Emelyanychev gave us last night, its greatness is revealed. From the mysterious rumble of the timps at the start, through the dramatic prelude with its soaring solo violin, we are brought into the light of the remarkable slow movement. Time seems to stand still as the violin and the orchestra weave ever more beautiful strands of melody together. I had deliberately played my recording of the concerto with David Oistrakh before leaving home yesterday, as he, for me, made the most beautiful sound I have ever heard on a violin, and I wanted to compare. Nicola Benedetti, still ridiculously young, plays with a magisterial sweetness, which sets her apart from her contemporary peers, and matched with her obviously exceptional charisma, she really is a wonder. And a Scottish wonder! She committed herself fully to the brilliant finale, and with Maxim conjuring great sounds from the SCO, this was a performance to savour. Her warm words afterwards, promising full commitment to her new role as Festival Director, were very welcome, and those of us who hope desperately that her tenure will be a huge success, both for the Festival and for Scotland too, were much encouraged.
Maxim Emelyanychev has also been a huge positive for Scottish music recently, and his idiosyncratic and flamboyant conducting, baton less, was an outstanding feature of this concert. Even his layout of the orchestra, with the double basses high up in the organ gallery above the woodwind, was a stroke of genius, as these great instruments were heard much more clearly than usual.
The problem was that, in the second half, a selection of bits from a ballet, admittedly rather a good one, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’, proved meagre fare after the highs of the Bruch concerto. A Ballet suite, a selection of tunes from a ballet turned into an orchestral piece, can prove an exciting part of a concert, but simply playing excerpts in a vague order, with no balletic action to watch, was really rather dull. Whoever decided on this bit of programming, whether conductor or Festival, got it wrong. Surely a Tchaikovsky symphony would have been far better? In addition, choosing to omit music from the final act when all is resolved, seemed perverse. I assumed that the encore would be the end of the ballet, but even that was played out of order. One final moan – if you have chosen music, taken haphazardly from a ballet, do not dim the house lights so no one can read their programme notes. All the ballet sections were written down, but we couldn’t read them!
The SCO played magnificently however, with special mentions for the wonderful harpist, Eleanor Hudson and the cellist, Philip Higham, and also congratulations and farewell to the violinist, Ruth Crouch, whose imminent retirement after many years’ service was warmly announced by Nicola Benedetti.
So, to sum up, this was an excellent concert, only slightly let down by eccentric programming.
Cover photo: Ryan Buchanan
