Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Dunblane Cathedral Making the young Mozart sound cool as 50s jazz

Arts Editor

Monday 18 June 2012

There are a good few new faces in the SCO since Alexander Janiczek was the orchestra's leader, but under his direction on tour – and this all-Mozart programme was the first date in a busy summer schedule – the band still sparkles.

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Keith Bruce

All of that is certainly true of recently recruited principal horn Alec Frank-Gemmill, soloist on Mozart's Third Horn Concerto, whose final rondo is the best known tune for his instrument. Last heard playing Ligeti with Ticciati in January, Frank-Gemmill is equally relaxed on earlier repertoire, his short cadenza one might imagine influenced by the cool jazz of 50s America.

The concerto was the piece that tested the balance in the cathedral acoustic most, but the results were remarkable – reverberant certainly, but with clear separation between all the sections of the strings at all times. The young Mozart's Symphony 21, which opened the programme, might have been written to illustrate the point, or its second movement Andante seemed so. Without meaning to belittle Janiczek's role – all players' eyes on him in the first violin's chair – the compact SCO often seems a "self-balancing" orchestra, and it certainly did that in unfamiliar surroundings here.The single movement Rondo in B-Flat K269 (with Janiczek as soloist), is scarcely later in the catalogue but is far from an apprentice work, and was a useful precursor for the 39th Symphony, which shares the key of E-flat with the Horn Concerto. Recorded by the SCO under Sir Charles Mackerras in his last years, the clarity of the interweaving wind line in the slower central movements set up a lovely brisk performance of the jewel-like Allegro Finale.HHHH

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Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Dunblane Cathedral Making the young Mozart sound cool as 50s jazz

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