Music: Scottish Chamber Orchestra

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce, five stars

THE MYSTERY of this week’s performances by the SCO Chorus of Schumann’s Requiem is why the work has been so comprehensively lost. My own theory is that it was in some way superseded by Brahms’s German Requiem, which turns out to owe it a huge debt in terms of the textures, cadences and structure of the choral writing, but which broke new ground in its language and humanitarianism – a result that would surely have dismayed Johannes.

Schumann’s Requiem is radical enough in its own way, the composer having looked at the text of the Latin mass with fresh eyes and produced a unique work. While parts can be seen as deeply personal from a man whose struggle with depression is well documented, sections like Domine Jesu Christe and the Sanctus are as powerful expressions of faith as can be found anywhere in the genre.

What is unarguable is that in conductor Richard Egarr and chorusmaster Gregory Batsleer the Requiem found the champions it deserves, with the size of the choir and the quality of the performance perfect for the piece. Save for a short Marian hymn for the mezzo (Daniela Lehner, one of a quality quartet), the chorus has the best of the music and sang it quite wonderfully, making the most powerful case for a lost masterwork.

Egarr – who has become the SCO’s key regular guest conductor – had paired it thoughtfully with the Serenade No.2 that the young Brahms dedicated to Schumann’s widow, Clara. Anyone who knew this early work would have been unsurprised that it was virtuoso clarinettist that later persuaded Brahms out of retirement. A score that dispenses with violins entirely gives all the melodic exposure to flutes, oboes and clarinets, the ten-piece wind band (with the addition of a piccolo for the finale) matched precisely by strength of the accompanying strings.