Music

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Keith Bruce

four stars

WHILE wishing regular visitor Emmanuel Krivine a speedy recovery, SCO concertgoers ¬might consider a benefit of the French conductor’s illness to be the orchestra presenting the UK debut of young American conductor Case Scaglione. Previously associate conductor at the New York Phil and now a well-established name in continental Europe, it would be no bad thing at all if he were to join the SCO’s stable of regular guests in the podium.

In what was the final concert by the orchestra’s much-loved timpanist, Matthew Hardy, who is moving south to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra following his marriage, his playing somehow exemplified exactly what Scaglione brought out of the orchestra in an account of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that was rhythmically crisp but never hurried and made the best of the melodious slow movement and in the dynamics of the third. Conducting the symphony and the opening Overture to Der Freischutz by Weber without a score, Scaglione seemed to make the chamber orchestra sound like a much larger band at times, for what was a very well-filled auditorium, including well over a hundred under-18s taking advantage of the orchestra’s new free ticket offer. A capacity house is expected at the Glasgow concert in the City Halls.

Of course the programme was a key element of that, with one of the most famous pieces in the canon preceded by the Beethoven piano concerto in the same key, the Third. The conductor’s countryman, Robert Levin, who has just celebrated his 70th birthday, brought his renowned erudition to the solo part, as well as the flair of his own improvised cadenzas, always staying clearly within the embrace of Beethoven’s own themes. Here again it was the measured approach of both men to the slow Largo that was especially memorable.

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