Emelyanychev and the SCO summon up the dynamism and energy to hold a programme of extremes together

United KingdomUnited Kingdom MacMillan, Widmann, Adams: Sergei Nakariakov (trumpet), Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor). Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 30.1.2025. (SRT)

Sergei Nakariakov (trumpet) © Thierry Cohen

MacMillan – Tryst
Widmannad absurdum; Con Brio
AdamsChamber Symphony

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra has always had a strong record in contemporary music, but this year they have lifted out of their regular season three concerts that focus particularly on the music of living composers and marketed them as a set entitled ‘New Dimensions’. The set gets more than its own brochure, though: each of the concerts has a shared vibe. The centre stalls of Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall are replaced by café tables, gentle coloured lighting stays up during the music, and a DJ plays in the foyer before and after the concert, with the audience encouraged to get a drink and stay to hear him.

This middle concert in the series didn’t contain any premieres, but it contained four pieces by living composers all of which had a lightning bolt of energy driving through them. Nowhere did that glint with more jagged frenzy than in Jörg Widmann’s ad absurdum. Calling Widmann’s piece a trumpet concerto seems to sell it short: it is a maximum velocity hurtle through a torrential storm of music at its most extreme; 16 minutes of semiquavers played at a speed that really shouldn’t be possible. It was written for trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov, and after the confident poise of his performance I would struggle to imagine anyone else playing it. Nakariakov seemed to begin the concerto in mid-phrase, already whizzing through his torrent of notes in a way that wasn’t so much dazzling as overwhelming. How on earth did he breathe as he careered through the perpetual motion whirl of energy that Widmann had written for him? Blowed if I know, but the impact was both dazzling and unforgettable. The orchestra was every bit as pressed, barely coming up for air so intense was their concentration on their scores, but the harmonic language and the rhythmic intensity created a weirdly satisfying piece, for all that it felt like an assault on the senses: compelling, exciting, and ever so slightly terrifying.

Nothing else on the programme could stand up to that virtuosic whirlwind, and indeed some of the pieces felt a bit stale in comparison. Widmann’s Con Brio has lost a bit of its shock value because it is now so widely played, and a lot of his effects, such as the noteless blowing or percussive clacking, have come to sound a little trite. Similarly, James MacMillan’s Tryst is played a lot in Scotland, and now sounds a bit over-long. MacMillan wrote it for the SCO, who gave its premiere in 1989, but now each of its five contrasting sections feel like they have been extended just a little too much, despite the excitement of the angular wind syncopations and the melting string glissandi. It was one of MacMillan’s first orchestral works: I wonder what it would sound like if he was writing it now?

John Adams’s Chamber Symphony recaptured some of the mania of ad absurdum, but on a more delicate scale for only 15 musicians, and with a more balanced spread of textures. Written in 1992, the symphony’s musical world is one where rules don’t seem to matter, where melodies swing, and the mood is so relaxed that it even embraces moments of cartoonish honkytonk. The highly polished remnant of the SCO who took it on managed to be both a set of soloists and a cohesive body, bonded together by their Principal Conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, perhaps the only conductor in the British Isles who could summon up the dynamism and energy required to hold a programme of such extremes together.

Simon Thompson

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