SCO, 17/12/2021

J. Strauss II : Der Zigeunerbaron - Overture

Mozart : Violin Concerto No. 1 (Nicola Benedetti, violin)

Schoenberg : Verklärte Nacht

J. Strauss II : G'shichten aus dem Wienerwald

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore

With a programme book-ended by the Waltz King's music, there was a hint of New Year's Day concert about tonight.  Austria - Vienna and Salzburg - was certainly at the heart of it.  Perhaps most striking was the fact that only 14 years separate the Gypsy Baron operetta, and Schoenberg's Transfigured Night.  Their musical language is very different, Strauss entering the last decade of a long and prolific career, while Schoenberg was just at the start of a revolutionary, if controversial, one.  Mozart, for his part, was just seventeen when his first Violin Concerto was written, but considering he wrote his first symphony at eight, he was no novice.  

We're mostly used to associating Strauss's music with the luxurious purr of the Rolls-Royce of orchestras that is the Vienna Philharmonic.  The Scottish Chamber Orchestra simply doesn't field those kinds of numbers, and orchestration for both the pieces here was reduced - perhaps most noticeably, no zither solo for Tales from the Vienna Woods, which was not altogether surprising, but also, for example, no harp in either piece.  They also didn't quite have the right mitteleuropäisch flavour for some of the Hungarian dance-inspired passages in the Zigeunerbaron Overture, but the waltz section swung very nicely.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 doesn't exactly dance, but it has a light-hearted grace to it that makes it a comfortable neighbour to Strauss's unabashedly popular waltzes.  The violin solo part is brilliant, but not extravagantly flashy, and in Nicola Benedetti's hands seemed airy and effortless, with a particularly elegant and eloquent central Adagio, while the last movement was particularly sprightly and happy.  

She stayed with the orchestra, taking over Gilmore's place as leader/director for the string orchestra version of Schoenberg's 1899 string sextet Verklärte Nacht.  This is one of the three major works of Schoenberg's earliest, Late Romantic period of composition, along with Gurre-Lieder and Pelleas und Melisande.  The latter two are rather monumental works requiring substantial forces, but the density of texture and harmonic complexity is just as intense in the chamber piece as in the other two.  The orchestral version has its advantages and disadvantages - over the years I've mainly come to prefer the original - but it was nevertheless good to hear it.  Without an actual conductor, there were one or two spots, notably the start of the fourth 'stanza', where the ensemble unravelled just a little, but they recovered quickly enough, and the overall passage from darkness to light was well done.

As mentioned earlier, it did seem a little odd to have Vienna Woods without its signature zither solo, but generally the rustic atmosphere came across well, even if the brass and percussion seemed a little more aggressively militaristic than really necessary.  However, I think that might have been an effect of the overall balance, since it's mainly the strings that suffer in a reduced format.  However, it was a delightful way to end the evening, and a welcome leavening after the feverish emotion of the Schoenberg.

[Next : 13th January, unless I come across some live streams of interest over the festive period]