Classical review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra - City Halls, Glasgow

By KENNETH WALTON
Published on Saturday 4 February 2012 01:46

BEETHOVEN’S Mass in C, his Symphony No 4, and Gluck’s overture Iphigénie en Aulide are all works that sit, to varying degrees, in the shadows of more popular examples of these composers’ music.

So, whether by accident or design, the packaging together of all three in last night’s Glasgow programme by the SCO, under French conductor Louis Langrée, seemed to be making a case on their behalf.

The point was well made in a series of performances that took as their starting point an electrifying combination of elemental rawness and hypersensitive dynamism. The opening of the Gluck laid bare its lean, clean lines, Langrée shaping the work with sharply focused articulation and hard-edged, heightened expressiveness. His reading of the Beethoven symphony was injected with the same counterbalance of tight control and explosive spontaneity.

Yet there was room in all this for a luxuriant soulfulness in the opening bars, and for extraordinary attention to detail, such as the subtly stressed accompaniment figurations that underpin the momentum of the Adagio.

If anything let this refreshing performance down, it was an occasional lack of power in the violin section, often subsumed by the pungent woodwind and brass.

Balance was never an issue with the Mass in C, in which every word from the SCO Chorus was crystal clear, aided by a cohesive, directional and clean-textured choral sound.

Elena Xanthoudakis, Jurgita Adamonyté, Andrew Staples and Alastair Miles were a liberating solo vocal quartet, providing the all-important operatic edge that gives this setting its genuine originality.

Rating: ****

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