SCO/Fischer – review

4 / 5 stars
City Halls, Glasgow

There's an increasingly clear line between James MacMillan's heavy-cast religious music and his more delicately crafted instrumental works. Take his Oboe Concerto, premiered in Birmingham in 2010 and given its first Scottish outing last week by oboist François Leleux and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Thierry Fischer. The concerto shows MacMillan at his very best, shifting fluently between evocative soundscapes and shot through with moments of haunting beauty.

The first movement opens with spry interlocking rhythms and soaring oboe lines; the second is a heart-on-sleeve elegy, expansive and generously expressive; the third is a rugged dance of the furies thronging with timpani, crazed strings and the most robust oboe writing I've heard. It's a shame, then, that MacMillan occasionally interrupts the flow with aggressive non sequiturs and inflated brass fanfares; there's a dogged black-and-whiteness that creeps into his message. The playing was superb, though. Leleux's sound is simply gorgeous, his high register breathtaking, and he reeled off MacMillan's torrents of notes in vivid shapes.

The concerto was given flattering company alongside Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, both works that accentuated its rustic energy and elegant lines. Fischer and the SCO made a great match, too. Fischer's conducting is concise and considered, with a thrilling knack for holding energy levels at brimming point without letting a drop spill over. For the Stravinsky he rearranged the orchestra so that principal double bass Nikita Naumov sat where the principal cello usually would, and so featured almost as a soloist. Even though the interpretation was more refined than muscular, the sound was gutsy bottom-rich, with extra emphasis on the Serenata's off-kilter pizzicatos and the Tarantella's propulsive walking bass. The Mendelssohn was spruce and radiant with rapid-fire staccatos, weightless phrasing in the Andante and a palpable dance step to the Saltarello.
