Music

SCO/Emelyanychev

Perth Concert Hall

Keith Bruce

five stars

WITH the RSNO’s Rite of Spring yet to come, Scotland’s new orchestral season is beginning in grand style – and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra had an ace to play with the world premiere of the Second Violin Concerto by Sir James MacMillan, dedicated to and performed by Nicola Benedetti.

Concerts in Edinburgh and Glasgow follow, and Perth’s fine hall was packed for the work’s debut, which happened to fall between the composer’s contribution to the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth and his own Cumnock Tryst festival at the weekend. If the works to be heard this month give new listeners a sense of the range of MacMillan’s music, those familiar with it might have been startled by the unashamed lyricism and even wistfulness of some of the new concerto.

In particular the gentle harmonic opening and the work’s closing bars frame it in a style that is quite uncharacteristic, and also rather lovely. Elsewhere the through-composed single-movement work is more robust, with a Shostakovian march making a couple of appearances and tolling timpani later on, but it is in these outer sections that it is most an ensemble work. Save for a few bars of dialogue with principal cello Philip Higham and guest leader Joel Bardolet, Benedetti’s solo part largely sat apart from the orchestration, and has clearly been written with her playing style specifically in mind – her performances of the Bruch and Brahms concertos find echoes in the virtuosic music MacMillan has written for her.

At times that is backed by cascades of notes from the wind section, while a more lyrical solo is accompanied by an arresting pulse in the low strings, in what is a very broad sonic palette. Co-commissioned by the SCO with partners in Sweden, Poland and American, Benedetti’s approach to the new work will undoubtedly develop as she plays it around the world, but it will also be fascinating to hear other violinists, orchestras and conductors tackle its wide range.

The SCO’s Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev presented it between big orchestral works from the 20th and 19th centuries that both called for a large edition of the chamber orchestra. It is not often his fellow Russian first double bass Nikita Naumov leads a section of four – the other three all women here.

Many conductors approach John Adams’s “outtake” from the opera Nixon in China, The Chairman Dances, as a rhythmic exercise, but Emelyanychev was as keen to explore its cinematic colour as Mao’s strict-time foxtrot. That was echoed in the edgy second movement waltz of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 6, the “Pathetique”, after the interval. Far from as steady as it is often played – in defiance of its time signature – it was part of a reading of the work that was never subservient to the tunes, from the sinister edge of the opening bars to the hesitancy in the concluding ones.

The conductor had perhaps determined to forestall the audience tendency to clap the big finish of the penultimate movement by skipping quickly to the Finale, but this happy crowd scuppered his plan by enthusiastically applauding after all four. It would be churlish, and precious, to disapprove.