Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Maxim’s Mozart
Queen’s Hall - 24/03/22
This was the title of the SCO concert and so it proved to be as the SCO’s principal conductor stamped his authority all over this all-Mozart programme from the first serenade, where despite not being present at its performance his arrangement of the musicians with the violin and violas standing and the timpani player right in the centre dominated proceedings. Going on to the second part of the programme Mozart’s piano concerto No 20, where as well as playing he would arise energetically to conduct the work. Finally to the concluding work after the interval, Mozart’s Symphony No 39 where he threw himself into conducting it leaving no doubt as to who was in charge, this was indeed Maxim’s Mozart and great fun it was.
The Queens Hall was full, and the SCO were back to their normal size of around 36 musicians. I was particularly pleased to see Su-a-Lee my favourite and the most colourful cellist in Scotland back with the orchestra. Su-a has been spending time in the Highlands with her new husband Hamish Napier, one of Scotland’s leading folk musicians and indeed herself doing crossover work with folk music. I will be reviewing Su-a and the Highlands’ best folk musicians at Eden Court in Inverness on Thursday May 5th. It promises to be a great concert. I will also be reviewing the wonderful Mahler Players doing two Beethoven Symphonies at Strathpeffer Pavilion on Sunday May 8th. There is culture in the Highlands!
The first work was preceded by Maxim introducing the concert and talking of his love of Mozart. He then disappeared allowing them to get on with it but I’ve no doubt he made clear his interpretation in rehearsal and in his placement of the musicians, with violins and violas standing to the right and the left of Louise Goodwin, timpani, who was right in the centre; everyone else was behind. The work itself was the Serenade No 6, known as the ‘Serenata Notturna’, which according to David Kettle’s excellent notes was written by a 19-year old Mozart in Salzburg for an evening entertainment for a member of the local gentry. Whether he intended this light-hearted work to be dominated by the drums is I suspect open to question and owes more to Maxim’s placement of the musicians, and no doubt encouragement to Louise on the timpani; in any case she dominated this work with her vigorous drumming. It was also probably amplified by the acoustics of the Queens Hall; the wooden surround seemed to resonate loudly to the drums. It reminded me of a conversation I had with outgoing Festival director, Fergus Linehan, earlier in the week where he looked forward to Edinburgh’s new chamber music concert hall now expected in a couple of years’ time. I love the Queens Hall and have spent many happy hours there over the last 50 years but there is no doubt it has major flaws in sight lines and acoustics. It’s only when you sit in a perfectly designed concert hall, like the Wigmore or King’s Place in London, that you notice the difference. Despite those problems the Serenade was a fun piece, if slight in the Mozart pantheon.
We were then treated to the full Maxim - his interpretation of Mozart’s 20th piano concerto preceded by an interpretation of part of Mozart’s Requiem as a prelude. This puzzled me at the time and thanks to Ken Walton in his fine review in our rival online music magazine Vox Carnyx for explaining this. Ken is undoubtedly one of Scotland’s finest music critics, for the Scotsman and now for Vox Carnyx, and with the looming demise of print journalism on-line music magazines are the future. When Maxim launched into the main work, he pursued it vigorously getting up in between his solos to energetically conduct the orchestra. Whether they paid too much attention to his flamboyant gestures is hard to say; their eyes seemed to be firmly focussed on the score but then the work was clearly done in rehearsal. The only jarring point for me was the pause to retune between movements. Is this really necessary? Sure string instruments may lose perfect tuning over a work but pausing for retuning seems to me to interrupt the flow of the work.
The final work after the interval was Mozart’s Symphony 39, one of the last 3 symphonies written before his death and reflecting the peak of his symphonic work. As David Kettle points out in his programme notes, we may see them as great works now, but for Vienna at that time they were meant to entertain, and the SCO aided by Maxim certainly did that tonight. Maxim’s conducting is charismatic and colourful, like that other great Russian conductor Gergiev (currently under a Putin-sized cloud). He doesn’t use a stick, but his fingers to tell a story of what he wants from the musicians, even twirling them into patterns at times. One discordant note towards the end was when he stopped the work to provoke premature applause and then restarted to conclude. Did he do it deliberately to be mischievous? Maybe - Maxim is very playful, but did it work? I don’t think it did. In any case the performance was a triumph. The orchestra clearly love Maxim, as do the Queens Hall audiences, who gave him prolonged applause. It was indeed Maxim’s Mozart!
