Music Review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Published on Friday 10 April 2009 21:12

LES Illuminations is the title Paul Verlaine gave to a collection of unpublished material by modernist poet Arthur Rimbaud, discovered after his death.

When Benjamin Britten came across the texts he set ten of them to music in the space of just a few months for soprano/tenor and string orchestra. He was clearly inspired by Rimbaud's hashish-fuelled verses, which cast a surreal light on the darker aspects of life.

Soprano Sally Matthews bought a grounded sensibility to these short, dizzy episodes with her warm, full-bodied voice and crystal clear articulation. There were plenty of opportunities for her to demonstrate her outstanding vocal technique with sighing chromatics and slightly hysterical intervals.

Conductor Andrew Litton and the SCO followed suit, superbly capturing the deranged nature of this mesmerising work.

It was flanked by two very different symphonies in C. The first, Stravinsky's 1938-40 symphony, may be traditional in terms of structure but the content reflects his own individual style. This strident work barely pauses for breath, not even in the larghetto, with the brass and woodwind driving the underlying sense of urgency.

Bizet wrote his Symphony in C nearly 100 years earlier when he was just 17. Youthful exuberance is stamped all over this jaunty offering of sweeping string melodies, poignant oboe lines and and even bagpipe-like drones.