Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 8 May 2011

A COMMENT made by a member of the audience at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert at Eden Court on Sunday rang a bell in my memory about my review in Northings of their last concert in Inverness, on 11 April 2010.

At the risk of false modesty, it is worth quoting: “There was a time, some years ago, when the Scottish Chamber Orchestra looked on Inverness as its second home. Those days may be past, but their tradition of putting in an extra effort for The Highlands lives on. A memorable evening that put the SCO’s big brothers to shame.”

Olari Elts (photo Toomas Volkmann)

It is with considerable pleasure that I am able to report that the SCO is still putting its big brothers to shame, as this was by far the most outstanding of the sparse handful of orchestral concerts that Eden Court has offered the Inverness audience to date this season.
There is another similarity between last year’s SCO concert in Inverness and this one; both featured compositions by Haydn and Brahms, although fortuitously both composers were sufficiently prolific and the works were different.

Returning to the podium after his incumbency as Principal Guest Conduct of the SCO was the Estonian Olari Elts, and it was obvious from the very first notes that the rapport between Elts and the SCO was still strong. With him, he brought some expanded forces to open his programme with the tuneful Brahms Variations on a theme of Haydn, known as the St Anthony Chorale. Extra horns, wind, a double bass and a percussionist with a triangle provided a fuller sound for this popular piece of theme, eight variations and finale, which, it turns out probably is not by Haydn after all. Rather it is an anonymous pilgrim chant.

There is no doubt that Haydn can claim the credit for his Cello Concerto in C major as its manuscript was fully authenticated by music scholars when it was uncovered in the National Museum in Prague in 1961, having been thought lost for nigh on two centuries. While composers in every era churn out works that many think should be lost, permanently, this concerto does not deserve such a fate.

For this short four concert tour, the soloist that the SCO managed to attract was the outstanding young Frenchman Jean-Guihen Queyras, a musician of exceptional versatility and integrity. Even though the opening movement of this concerto is marked Moderato, Queyras launched into it with full-blooded exuberance, extracting every gram of joie de vivre that Haydn offered, a spirit that Elts and the reduced size SCO were delighted to share.

The core of this concerto is the central movement, the Adagio. Queyras had brought himself back under control to present playing of sheer elegance and mellow beauty before returning to the finale, Allegro molto, bringing the work to a triumphant conclusion.
Unsurprisingly, the audience loved it, and their appreciation was rewarded by an encore; the seventh of Jean-Louis Duport’s twenty-one Etudes for cello, a series of finger exercises that strike fear into the hearts of student cellists the world over. The question that remains is how did Queyras manage to extract the melody from the harmonics as he rocked the bow back and forth over the four strings with very little fingering?

After the interval it was back to the 19th century and two more Austro-German composers, both of whom died tragically young, the one, Felix Mendelssohn from excessive overwork and the other, Hugo Wolf, from excessive overindulgence. But both composed memorable works with an Italian theme that remain popular to this day.

Wolf’s sunny Italian Serenade was the first of the composer’s mature works and is full of melodies and rhythms, given to the viola to highlight and played delightfully by the SCO’s Principal Viola, Jane Atkins.
To wind up an excellent concert, Olari Elts drew all the brilliance and lightness from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, the “Italian”. The SCO responded to his every request in a resounding work packed with Mediterranean warmth – the perfect way to lift the slight chill of a Scottish spring evening.

Praise for this SCO concert was universal among the audience that filled the Empire Theatre stalls and stretched well into the first circle, demonstrating the popularity of the orchestra that is, without doubt, the finest in Scotland and one of the very best in the British Isles. 
Since Eden Court closed for refurbishment it would appear that the momentum for three or four concerts a year by this exceptional orchestra has been lost, reduced to but one visit to Inverness and a Highland Tour which includes Stirling, Kingussie, Banchory, Findhorn and Strathpeffer. For the coming season, 2011 – 2012, a scan of the SCO website failed to reveal even one visit to Eden Court [in fact, they have one scheduled concert in May 2012, playing Dvorak, Mozart and Beethoven with pianist Jonathan Biss – Ed.]

© James Munro, 2011

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• Scottish Chamber Orchestra