Maxim Emelyanychev unveils the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2025/26 Season

Maxim Emelyanychev tells a funny story about his earliest orchestral experience. It wasn’t on the podium, which is - after six seasons as principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - where Scots audiences are used to witnessing his electrifying presence, but as a jobbing teenage keyboardist in a local Russian orchestra.

“My teacher had told me that to be a conductor you have to understand what it means to play in an orchestra. Piano was my instrument, so at 12 years old I started to do exactly that, playing the celeste, organ, harpsichord or piano,” he recalls. But things didn’t go perfectly to plan.

“We were doing Schnittke’s Gogol Suite. There was no organ in the venue so I had to use a synthesiser. I felt very stressed, aware that my first entrance was a long, loud discordant note-cluster coming after some very serious opening music. When the moment came for me to play I must have pressed some button by mistake and this dance rhythm - ch-n, ch-n, ch-n - erupted over the loudspeakers, and I couldn’t stop it. Everybody was laughing. That was my first in-orchestra experience!”

Maxim Emelyanychev | Andrej Grilc

The reason we’re having this conversation is to learn about the SCO’s 2025-26 season, launched this week. Emelyanychev will personally be directing nine of the 27 programmes in the main Edinburgh/Glasgow season, among which lurks that same eccentric Schnittke suite. It half-quotes Bach, Beethoven and Haydn, fitting neatly into February’s Baroque Inspirations programme. “That’s become a bit of a tradition, where we combine actual Baroque music with 20th century Baroque-inspired pieces,” he says.

What you don’t get with Emelyanychev, however, is stylistic pigeonholing. He crosses stylistic borders with quixotic abandon in both planning and execution. “I’m just looking to share the most beautiful music with our audiences, whether its classic repertoire like Tchaikovsky, Ravel or Mozart, or whether it’s something new, as in our current collaboration with [SCO associate composer] Jay Capperauld.”

These can coexist, he insists. “A concert can be like going to a museum, where you see pictures by great artists of the 20th, 19th and 16th centuries. They don’t need to be connected, but you enjoy seeing them in that space for the few hours you are there and make your own connections.”

Thus an October season opener, From Darkness into Light, in which Richard Strauss’ sumptuous Metamorphosen journeys towards Beethoven’s Fifth by way of soloist Colin Currie in James MacMillan’s theatrical percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel; or a tantalising Gloria! programme that pits Vivaldi’s classic Venetian Baroque setting against the acerbic 20th century potency of Poulenc’s Gloria; or a season finale that sandwiches the pyrotechnics of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1 (featuring pianist Steven Osborne and trumpeter Aaron Akugbo) between the contrasting Ninth Symphonies of Shostakovich and Dvorak.

Not that Emelyanychev shies away from more rigorous entities. “Mozart is my favourite composer,” he says, evident in a concert exclusively dedicated to the last three symphonies. “I so enjoyed doing this at the BBC Proms three years ago, but felt it was a pity we weren’t bringing the programme to Edinburgh and Glasgow. I’m so happy we’re now doing that.”

Two single-work programmes shine especial focus on Berlioz and Tchaikovsky respectively: the former featuring baritone Roderick Williams and tenor Andrew Staples among a starry vocal line-up for Berlioz’s opulent operatic oratorio L’Enfance du Christ; the latter a timely December airing of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music for The Nutcracker, a personal Christmas favourite of Emelyanychev’s. “This music has everything: lots of drama, lots of love, lots of fairy tale magic.”

Maxim Emelyanychev in rehearsals with the SCO | ChristopherBowen

It’s not just the music, or an orchestra so in tune with Emelyanychev's idiosyncratic ways, that fuels the Russian conductor’s palpable enthusiasm for SCO concerts. Developing relationships with key artists has been equally satisfying, he says - soloists like Nicola Benedetti, who has still to feature this season in Brahms’ Violin Concerto, and will be returning again next year with Emelyanychev in the Mendelssohn concerto. “When soloists come to the SCO it’s always very special because we are lucky to have plenty of rehearsals. That way, we can experiment a lot, and if we discover something interesting to explore we develop it until perfection. At last we try to!”

The same goes for the many talented musicians within the orchestra who take centre stage as soloists. Next season sees principal cellist Philip Higham step up in Schumann’s Cello Concerto and the UK premiere of Jörg Widmann’s iridescent Albumblätter. Higham also appears with “Maxim and friends” in one of the SCO’s Queen’s Hall chamber concerts, a Schumann matinee in February.

Prominent also within the new season are the SCO’s ebullient principal guest conductor Andrew Manze (overseeing, among other things, Mozart piano concertos with soloist Yeol Eum Son and the world premiere of Capperauld’s The Language of Eden) and, with a typically folk-inspired programme, violinist/director Pekka Kuusisto. Others performing the soloist/director role include Colin Currie, violinists Anthony Marwood and Alina Ibragimova, and violist Lawrence Power.

The more informal New Dimensions concerts continue with a John Adams spectacular, Gnarly Buttons, under Manze, Saxophone Dreams with the charismatic British saxophonist Jess Gillam, and a Colin Currie cocktail of Reich, Duddell and Grime. The SCO’s digital series, co-presented by The Scotsman, extends with a specially-created film showcasing three of Capperauld’s works created while serving as associate composer. Building on the success of the new afternoon concerts, former SCO bassoonist Peter Whelan returns to direct a Mozart Matinee.

Scottish Chamber Orchestra Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev conducts the Orchestra and SCO Chorus at City Halls Glasgow | Christopher Bowen

Involved throughout the season, as always, is the SCO Chorus, distinctive for its unique blend and precision under Gregory Batsleer’s uncompromising direction. Emelyanychev is their biggest fan. “Gregory does such fantastic work with them. You go to the first rehearsal and they are so flexible. They pick things up so fast I don’t need to speak much,” he says.

Besides regular season commitments, the Chorus will also be part of the SCO’s concert performance of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. “I love doing these,” Emelyanychev says of this unfolding Festival Mozart opera series. “We have big plans to perform more and it’s such a joy to be part of an event where all the arts come together, when there's so much energy in city.”

Most of all, Edinburgh’s feels like home to the globetrotting Russian. “The more I come, the more I feel close to the musicians and the better we all do together.” Few would argue with that.

For more information about the SCO's 2025-26 Season, and to book tickets, visit www.sco.org.uk

Read More: SCO & Pekka Kuusisto, Edinburgh review: 'a joyful romp'

The Scotsman is the official media partner of the SCO’s 2025-26 Season