Music review: SCO, Gregory Batsleer and the SCO Chorus, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

With a snug set-up that left some audience members sitting just inches from the musicians, this warm hug of a programme went down a storm, writes David Kettle

SCO, Gregory Batsleer and the SCO Chorus, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh ****

The Queen’s Hall is an intimate space at any time – even more so when the SCO Chorus is singing, with the performing area expanded so far out on Thursday night that just a few rows of stalls seats remained. The result was almost a concert in the round, with some listeners barely inches from musicians – just right, it turned out, for the orchestra and chorus’s warm hug of a programme.

The two choral miniatures that bookended the first half – Mendelssohn’s Verlieh uns Frieden and Schumann’s Nachtlied – got all the care and insight they deserved, conductor Gregory Batsleer shaping the arching vocal lines with expansive gestures, the chorus singers responding with conviction and precision. The Schumann, in particular, might last barely ten minutes, but it packs plenty of turmoil and spiritual contemplation into its languid reflection on sleep and death, conveyed with a winning richness by instrumentalists and singers alike.

The SCO Chorus PIC: Ruben Paris

The main event, however, was Schubert’s rarely heard Mass in A flat, perhaps not a masterpiece, but well worth exploring in Batsleer’s vivid, driven account. The chorus filled the hall with bounding energy in an exuberant Gloria, though they found just the right mix of joy and awe in the restrained closing Agnus Dei. Batsleer had a fine quartet of soloists, too, even if soprano Ruby Hughes seemed at odds with her colleagues in her strangely mannered delivery, all pulled-about rhythms and swallowed syllables.

What really shone out among all the velvety choral richness, however, was a brisk and bracing Bach Double Concerto from SCO leader Stephanie Gonley and principal second violin Marcus Barcham Stevens (who hopped back to their orchestral seats during the rest of the programme). It was bright and nimble, rhythmically supple, and with a splendid sense of bustling energy in its final movement. With listeners so close all around to Gonley and Barcham Stevens’s radiating energy, no wonder it went down a storm.