Classical review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

GIVEN that Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is usually heard in the concert hall in its version for orchestra alone, last night’s performance at the Usher Hall was a somewhat revelatory production.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

USHER HALL

Star rating: * * * *

Opening with the usual Overture, familiar fairies darted around the orchestra with the tiniest of gossamer light steps under conductor Sir Roger Norrington’s seasoned direction. As the SCO conjured the magical setting for actors Maureen Beattie and Jimmy Yuill to enter, the spoken word put the music in the context of the play, even from time to time with a Glasgow twang.

With the addition of the bright voices of soprano sisters Sophie and Mary Bevan as singing fairies and the impeccable sound and diction that form the hallmark of the National Youth Choir of Scotland girls’ choir in hypnotising lullaby, this was a dream of joy and carefree happiness, an escape from the real world into one of fantasy woven around love.

The Wedding March was the ideal vehicle for crisp fanfares from the brass and sparkling suppleness from the strings.

On a night where the female voice was to the fore, mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager was disappointingly underwhelming in the first half. Looking and sounding uncomfortable for much of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, Kirchschlager has a beautifully silken voice, but these intimate songs didn’t really take off.