Music review: SCO, SCO Chorus & Richard Egarr, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Led by an insightful and committed performance from conductor/harpsichordist Richard Egarr, the SCO captured Handel’s Israel in Egypt brilliantly at the Usher Hall, writes David Kettle

SCO, SCO Chorus & Richard Egarr, Usher Hall, Edinburgh *****

It was only a few weeks back that the SCO Chorus singers showed themselves on blisteringly vivid form amid the joyful conjurings of stars, plants, seas and animals from Genesis in Haydn’s The Creation. The singers returned – alongside the SCO and conductor/harpsichordist Richard Egarr – for some equally vivid elemental depictions from Exodus in Handel’s Israel in Egypt, though this time, the focus was on destruction and intimidation, caused by the plagues of flies, frogs, hail and more visited on the Egyptians by a vengeful deity.

Nonetheless, the Chorus captured Handel’s rather gleeful depictions brilliantly, with impeccable ensemble, faultless clarity and an astonishing level of energy and stamina in a work that puts its choral forces squarely in the spotlight from start to finish.

The SCO Chorus PIC: Ruben Paris

They scampered their way nimbly through Handel’s flies and lice, with the SCO strings buzzing urgently alongside them, and matched Egarr’s carefully choreographed surging storms, though – ironically – they might have brought a bit too much ringing clarity to the veiled, groping music depicting the darkness cast over the land.

Israel in Egypt is very much a choral piece: Handel only expanded its solo numbers after its initial performances didn’t go down well. Nonetheless, Egarr had assembled a luxury sextet of singers, among them alto Helen Charlston nimble and elegant amid Handel’s leaping frogs, and basses Ashley Riches and Peter Harvey appropriately turning ‘The Lord is a man of war’ into a testosterone-fuelled vocal battle.

Holding all the flamboyant wordpainting and multifarious forces together, however, was Egarr, leaping up from his harpsichord stool to galvanise the orchestra and chorus. His jabbing fists as God smites Egypt’s first-born left us in no doubt as to the fury and violence of the actions, and he clattered on his harpsichord so enthusiastically in Richard and Harvey’s duet that his glasses tumbled to the floor. You could hardly ask for greater insight or commitment.