United Kingdom Berlioz, MacMillan, Maxwell Davies – SCO’s The Auld Alliance: Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano), Robert Jordan (bagpipes), SCO Refrain (refrain director: Gregory Batsleer), Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor). Usher Corridor, Edinburgh, 21.3.2024. (SRT)

Berlioz – Rob Roy; La mort de Cléopâtre
MacMillan – Composed in August (world premiere)
Maxwell Davies – An Orkney Wedding ceremony, with Dawn

It’s simple to overlook simply how tight a grip Scotland asserted over the nineteenth century creative creativeness. Its untamed panorama and Romantic previous exerted an unlimited affect on portray, literature and, after all, music: Rossini, Donizetti, Mendelssohn and plenty of others wrote music set in or impressed by Scotland, so when Berlioz wrote his Rob Roy overture he was following a well-established pattern.

In reality, Berlioz’s overture is likely one of the least profitable examples: it’s a little bit of a hotch-potch, relying quite a bit on one Scots tune in a construction that’s politely described as free. It sounded nice as carried out on this Scottish Chamber Orchestra efficiency, although. They performed utilizing interval brass and timpani, and the pure horns sounded terrific within the opening fanfares. The marginally squashed sound you get from these devices provides them a barely far off high quality, however they grew in pleasure because the music progressed, making a terrific kick of adrenaline because it carried on. Avoiding vibrato gave a pungent tang to the string sound, and a juicy cor anglais solo added an actual contact of sophistication. Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev formed the entire thing like a growing drama, in fact giving the piece a classier sheen than it maybe deserved.

That string sound additionally added particular color to La mort de Cléopâtre, giving an fringe of drama to the opening recitative and dying away remarkably convincingly within the closing pages. There was by no means any doubt that the star was Karen Cargill, although, who sang the Queen of Egypt like a wounded heroine who decides of her personal accord that dying is her solely method out. Cargill has a voice of such velvety richness that she would sound marvellous if she was singing the cellphone ebook. When she has a textual content of such dramatic richness as this she is totally compelling, singing with chocolaty heat whereas inhabiting the ability of the language and singing with terrific depth of focus, a noticeable shadow falling over the voice when she invokes the spirits of her lifeless ancestors.

Two actual life Scots made up the second half of the programme, one born (James MacMillan) and one adopted (Peter Maxwell Davies). Emelyanychev and the orchestra gave virtually a semi-staged efficiency of Max’s Orkney Wedding ceremony, with Dawn, as a glass of whisky was introduced in for the conductor and chief midway by way of, and the orchestra yelped and whooped as they performed the music for the marriage dance. Robert Jordan made probably the most of his massive entrance on the bagpipes, and the entire piece had such an air of improvised jollity that the performers seemed they have been making it up on the spot. I think Max would have accredited.

And the opposite Scot? This live performance noticed the primary efficiency of MacMillan’s Composed in August, a setting for refrain and orchestra of Robert Burns’s Now westlin’ winds. A deeper sense of lyricism appears to have settled over a lot of MacMillan’s latest music (that I’ve heard, at any fee), and that was true of this piece, too. His choral writing for the poem was persistently heat and wonderful, grounded it within the humane heat of people music, however gathering in rising waves of pleasure and depth earlier than ebbing gently into a beautiful rock-a-bye ending. The SCO Refrain did a marvellous job of caressing it into life: among the vocal harmonisation was knee-weakeningly pretty, and appeared to play video games with the orchestral line that generally supported the choir and generally performed its personal video games. There was a ceaseless vitality to the instrumental texture all over, generally coming near Messianesque birdsong within the winds, however at all times with the heart beat of life effervescent near the floor, notably with two trilling oboes singing to at least one one other from totally different ends of the stage. I’m certain he didn’t write it for Easter however, right now of yr as one season provides technique to one other and Christians all over the world have fun life triumphing over dying, it felt fantastically applicable.

The Glasgow efficiency of this programme can be out there on BBC Sounds till twenty first April

Simon Thompson