Scottish Chamber Orchestra: The Dream

Usher Hall - 02/03/23 

SCO Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor | SCO Chorus, with Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale, sopranos

A melodic Mendelssohn evening with Max 

This was a delightful short melodic evening with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Usher Hall which was about half full on the evening. It began with a lively introduction from the bassoon player of the SCO Alison Green, stressing the importance of Italy to the Mendelssohn concert programme. She also drew our attention to the authentic nature of the performance with the SCO using gut strings in their string section, period brass instruments, including one I’d never heard of before an ophicleide, an earlier version of the tuba. Our conductor Maxim Emelyanychev is noted for rearranging the instruments in the orchestra and tonight the 4-strong double bass section was arranged at the top of the orchestra and you certainly could hear them clearly. 

The first half was devoted to Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony which although listed as his Fourth Symphony was actually the first he wrote, as explained by David Kettle in his excellent programme notes. It was composed by Mendelssohn after a trip to Italy, which lasted 10 months and which he described as about “light, sunshine and happiness”. He said his symphony was “blue sky in A major”. It certainly proved to be a delightful entry to the evening with Max’s enthusiastic conducting producing some lovely music from the orchestra and a warm response from the audience. 

After the interval we heard his incidental music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, which includes the famous Wedding March. As David Kettle explains Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny were great Shakespeare fans and would act out parts of his plays. When he was seventeen, he wrote an overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ which was very popular. Sixteen years later he was commissioned by King Frederick of Prussia to write incidental music for a production of the Dream at his palace in Potsdam. He incorporated his Overture into the Incidental Music and included some choral music, performed here by the SCO chorus and two guest sopranos, Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale. The SCO sopranos and altos under the direction of Gregory Batsleer produced some pleasant chorus work and the sopranos were perfectly adequate, but I did wonder why the SCO needed to import two English sopranos for what are very small parts. Surely there are Scottish singers who could have covered these parts. This was a very short sweet evening, ending at 9 pm including a 20 minute interval. It received a very warm response from the Usher Hall audience.