SCO: Hidden Gems
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh ✪✪✪✪
“Futuristic and forwardthinking” was how conductor/fortepianist (and erstwhile SCO principal bassoon) Peter Whelan described the brief CPE Bach Symphony that opened his enterprising programmewithhisformerband.
It set the tone excellently for Whelan’s succinct exploration of some little-explored byways of the Classical repertoire – this was strange, unpredictable music that threw conventional rules aside (though, truth be told, those rules hadn’t even been laid down at the time it was written). The Symphony also served to establish Whelan’s bounding, bouncing, eager way with his former colleagues, which delivered superbly shaped, sharply defined accounts throughout the concert. He only had to throw open his arms, or point at a particular section of players, for the music to burst into vivid life. These might have been lesser-known pieces,
but there was no mistaking Whelan’s enthusiasm for them.
British soprano Anna Dennis was a captivating presence in two arias Mozart wrote for his sister-in-law Aloysia Weber, caressing the silky phrases of ‘Vorrei spiegarvi’ particularly beautifully, though maybe a little uneven across the aria’s admittedly immense range. Her “Nehmt meinen Dank”, however, was thoughtful and focused.
Whelan had warned us that Haydn’s Symphony No. 102, which closed the concert, was
probably the composer’s loudest, and there was indeed plenty of vivid life in his bristling account – and timpani and trumpets resounding in every movement – but it was boisterous and exuberant rather than raucous. There was plenty to laugh about, too, in the switchback ride through grandeur and intimacy in its bubbling finale, something that brought smiles to the faces of the SCO players as much as to those of the audience.