Classical review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Edinburgh Queen’s Hall

THEY may both share the cultural heritage of central Europe, but the music of Dvorák and Ligeti sounded a million miles apart at the SCO’s concert.

Dvorák’s Symphony No 5 is awash with an abundance of warm tunefulness stemming from the traditional folksong of his Czech homeland. It spilled out from the orchestra as if in bright sunshine. Principal conductor Robin Ticciati expertly steered the music’s flow with affection, yet not without grit and bite in the darker slow movement.

Ligeti, on the other hand, is sparing in the usage of his compositional material. Bringing back tunes time and time again as the music develops is very definitely not his style, as the Hamburg Concerto for horn and chamber orchestra written in 1999 demonstrated. In seven compact movements, the piece’s micro-tunings and harmonies were described by the composer himself as “weird”. Performed with breathtaking precision by SCO principal horn Alec Frank-Gemmill in the solo role, there was a complex mystique to how his part and the four orchestral horns utilise the natural harmonics of their valveless instruments. At times, the resulting tonalities may assault the ears but there is a distinctive appeal to Ligeti’s music, known most widely through its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There was magic and mystery to Kodály too, his Dances of Galánta a rarely heard treat in Ticciati’s shaping, although, like the Dvorák, the scoring was almost too big for the Queen’s Hall space.

Rating: ****