Classical review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Published on Friday 6 November 2009 21:46

QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH ****

THE Scottish Chamber Orchestra's Viennese programme on Thursday sported a fascinating meeting of minds – those of the deep-thinking pianist Paul Lewis and violinist-turned-conductor Andrew Manze, poised to take up his guest conductorship next season with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The vehicle of that collusion was Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, straightforward enough on the surface, but demanding a whole lot of imagination and conviction to lighten the hegemony of the minor home key. Thankfully we got that, Lewis bursting its stronghold with a mighty intensity and mastery of melodic nuance (always a surprise tenuto or subtly altered shading), Manze pepping up the orchestral score with sharply defined wind and brass, and an urgency that matched Lewis's.

Palates had been well and truly cleansed by the aphoristic leanness of Webern's Five Movements for Strings. Manze shaped its brief pages with probing elasticity, creating a canny sense of fluidity out of Webern's elemental stabs.

Manze's decision to repeat the Webern at the start of the second half was a good move, partly because it produced a much sharper performance by the SCO strings.

And once again, it freshened the taste buds for Schubert's somewhat frivolous Symphony No 6, with all its playful references to Rossini and – more seriously – its pre-echoes of Schubert's later Great C Major symphony. Manze's exuberant stance rather emphasised the former in favour of the latter. Could that have been why this performance bore more superficiality and fragility than the music warranted?