Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Queen’s Hall
Scottish Chamber Orchestra becomes Scottish Baroque Orchestra!
Well not quite, but this was a very baroque concert, with all the string players playing gut strings, the brass players on baroque brass instruments, the percussionists playing a mixture of baroque drums and bells, and the SCO‘s very youthful conductor Maxim Emelyanychev playing harpsichord, baroque drum and whistle. The programme was totally baroque too with four great German and French baroque composers, Telemann, Bach, Lully and Rameau. In a little speech between the first and second item Maxim said he and the orchestra had been having great fun in rehearsal ,and at the end of this delightful concert we all agreed with him, we had great fun too.
In his introductory note in the programme the SCO‘s very colourful Russian principal double bass player Nikita Naumov said it was a very special concert for the SCO, as it was their first baroque concert with their new principal conductor who was going to conduct from the harpsichord. Of course Maxim Emelyanychev is not only an outstanding young conductor, he is also an award winning pianist and very familiar with the baroque repertoire. I recently saw him conduct the wonderful Joyce di Donato in Handel's Agrippina at Covent Garden. Of course there is always a tension between playing the harpsichord and conducting, particularly with Maxim's very flamboyant style of conducting. I discussed this once with John Butt of the Dunedin Consort who often conducts from the harpsichord. „John“, I said „you are aware we can't really hear the harpsichord?“ He said „It‘s really for the players rather than the audience!“ Certainly it was difficult to hear the harpsichord tonight from my position in the seventh row of the stalls, but then much of the time Maxim wasn't playing, but flinging himself around in his spirited conducting, not to mention playing the drum and recorder at the end!
The concert began with Telemann's Alster Overture (Suite) composed in 1721 for a great civic occasion in Hamburg. Telemann had recently been appointed Kantor in charge of music in the five biggest churches in Hamburg. Telemann at that time was the most famous musician in Germany, but was also very influenced by French music, particularly dance music. You could clearly hear the dance influence in this work, particularly from the baroque brass section which at times dominated the gut strings of the violins, violas and cellos, and all but drowned out the harpsichord. Still it was a lovely jolly work to begin the evening. This was followed by Bach's Orchestral Suite No 4 in D (BWV 1069), composed in 1725. Again, this is heavily influenced by French dance music which Bach was very aware of from his time in Weimar. There he heard the works of Lully who we heard later in this programme. In this work there is an interplay between the woodwind section and the strings, lead by the flamboyant leader of the SCO Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, but as in the Telemann once the brass comes in it tends to dominate the orchestra.
After the interval we switch from Germany to France, beginning with the Suite Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Lully, the great French composer. Although, as the programme notes point out, he was actually born in Florence. He came to France later when he became a tutor to a cousin of Louis XIV, later becoming a court composer and dancer! Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman) is based on a play by Moliere about a middle class merchant desperately trying to raise his social status and become part of the nobility. Lully‘s music was the basis for a comedie-ballet on the play, which used dance and music to create a kind of musical theatre of its period. Lully‘s music illustrates the man‘s attempts to become noble and pokes fun at his pomposity. It was great fun, including Maxim’s performance on recorder! The final work was by the great French opera composer Rameau. It was a suite from Les Indes Galantes, an early experiment in opera-ballet, a uniquely French artistic form which combines song and dance. Indeed, even now you will find most French operas have a substantial ballet section in them. Les Indes Galantes is all about love and tells the stories of Hebe, the goddess of youth, and L'Amour, the goddess of love, who abandon war-torn Europe and travel to the unspoilt exotic lands of India, South America, Persia and North America. For this work the orchestra adds some exotic baroque percussion, including tambourines, bells, drums and more brass.
The very full Queen‘s Hall audience gave a great reception to the orchestra and were rewarded by two encores, another dance from Les Indes Galantes, and another work from Les Boreades, both by Rameau. We were also treated to a solo by our conductor on the drum. Is there no end to his talents? There certainly is no end to Maxim's enthusiasm. It is clear the orchestra love their new principal conductor and so do the audience. We are in for an exciting time with Maxim on the rostrum of the SCO.
