SCO & Maxim Emelyanychev, Edinburgh review: 'playful and provocative'

Maxim Emelyanychev | Christopher Bowen / SCO

SCO & Maxim Emelyanychev, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh ★★★★

He might have been ensconced behind the harpsichord, tucked into the middle of the orchestra rather than waving his hands out front (for most of the music, at least), but the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s gripping concert had principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev’s fingerprints all over it.

First of all, this was evident in its playful, provocative staging – with basses sent to the back behind the woodwind, or everyone (bar cellos) standing for a brisk, breezy version of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, cunningly shaped and with a bracingly raw edge that made it sound newly minted. Then there was the concert’s music itself, and its revelatory mix of the well-worn and the barely known – as SCO violinist Gordon Bragg had wittily explained in his introduction.

Most memorable among the rarer music was the closing Symphony in D by the seldom encountered Paul Wranitzky, a contemporary of Mozart, which gushed with colour, rhythm and drive, and which Emelyanychev conducted with passion and convincing authority. There was even an unexpected – and substantial – concert addition, in the form of the very recently rediscovered Ganz kleine Nachtmusik (or “Very Little Night Music” – get it?) by Mozart, unearthed and nicknamed in Leipzig this September, and given a zipping account – surely its first in Scotland – from a nimble Emelyanychev on harpsichord plus a persuasive quartet of SCO musicians.

Most of all, though, there was the evident warmth and collegiality shared across players and director, most clearly embodied in homegrown soloists Maximiliano Martín and William Stafford (stepping out from their usual roles as SCO Principal and Sub-Principal clarinettists) in Krommer’s dashing, surely not entirely serious Double Clarinet Concerto No. 1, played with abundant joy, balance and mischief.

In musicological terms, the evening offered valuable insights into little-known pieces and people from the time of Haydn and Mozart. In more general terms, it was an awful lot of fun.