Universal Hall, Findhorn, Friday 27 June 2003

FRIDAY EVENING saw the first visit by the complete Scottish Chamber Orchestra to the Universal Hall, an attractive and underused venue that is full of character and atmosphere. If the acoustic lacked a little bloom when the full orchestra was playing, the proximity if the players to the audience gave a tremendous impression of direct involvement.

The group’s resident conductor, Joseph Swensen, took to the violin for the opening work, Brahms’ ‘Violin Concerto’, demonstrating in his highly-charged and dramatic playing what a considerable virtuoso he is. Having recently recorded the Mendelssohn ‘Concerto’ with the SCO, it is to be hoped that we will see more of this admirable aspect of a remarkably versatile musician. Exercising close control over his orchestral forces, he presented a powerfully gutsy reading of the Brahms concerto with real fire in its belly.

The second half of the concert opened with an elegant performance of Mendelssohn’s Overture to ‘Die schöne Melusine’, with some deliciously mellifluous clarinet playing from Maximiliano Martin. The young Mendelssohn wrote the work to address his dissatisfaction with the prelude to an opera by Conradin Kreutzer, and while his replacement itself received a cool reception at its premiere in 1834, further work produced a concert piece which has now achieved considerable popularity.

Appropriately on a sultry evening worthy of Budapest itself, it was a selection of Brahms’ mercurial ‘Hungarian Dances’ which provided a dramatic and passionate conclusion to this enjoyable concert. After the energetic and ever-popular fifth dance an extremely enthusiastic audience, fired up by the orchestral pyrotechnics, demanded a further dance before they would let the orchestra go. This large and engaged public, ranging in age from the elderly to the newborn (breast-fed during the first half), is a ringing endorsement of the SCO’s policy of bringing music to people in more informal settings.

The SCO will perform this programme at Millennium Hall, Invermoriston on 28 June 2003.

© D James Ross, 2003