Review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra - City Halls, Glasgow

By Ken Walton
Published on Monday 16 January 2012 00:00

FRENCH harpsichordist and conductor, Emmannuel Haïm, is a picture of svelte sophistication, and a fiery red-head to boot – a combination that imbues her performances with polished bravado.

Her Baroque programme with the SCO combined Handel and Rameau – a tasty concoction of Handel’s cosmopolitan worldliness versus Rameau’s flair for eccentric colour and typically French intuitive connection with the spirit of dance.

But stylistic stereotype was never the guiding principle in Haïm’s views on Handel’s well-worn Water Music, the solo cantata Delirio Amoroso, or Rameau’s suite from his opera Dardanus. Common to all was a delivery from the SCO that was immaculately shaped, spiced with consistent and flamboyant ornamentation, but laced with an energy rooted more in the individual soul of the music than any temptation to play to its cheap thrills.

In extracts from the latter Water Music suites – the “going home” music – the focus was on the twilight tones of the recorder and the exuberance of the strings. The brass, too, made a single burnished appearance in this customised outdoor music. Rameau’s suite, with its charismatic solos, was a sparkling contrast, either through its moments of magically contained understatement, or in those extrovert flourishes that climaxed with the single percussionist operating like a latter-day Keith Moon.

Handel’s early operatic cantata introduced the exhilarating clarity of Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling, and a performance that combined all-round virtuosity with Haïm’s insistence on keeping it all within the bounds of good taste.

RATING: ****

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