Music

Zurich Chamber Orchestra

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Michael Tumelty

five Stars

WHAT an electrifying afternoon on Sunday with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. They’re the same size as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra but sound nothing like them. Why? Their accent, I guess. Just as the SCO has its own voice, so does the conductorless Swiss band, led by concertmaster Willi Zimmermann. Their accent derives in part from the weighting they give to bass lines: a deep, meaty sound underpinned their playing.

And what a superlative programme they turned out with Mozart’s 33rd Symphony served as a crisp starter. Apart from that, the ingeniously-planned concert was given over entirely to three concertos; and all three concertos came from two ladies in black trouser suits: pianist Gabriela Montero in a loose, flowing outfit and trumpeter Alison Balsom in a skin-tight suit and killer high-heels. So elevated was Balsom that a lesser pair of lungs would have required oxygen. And she delivered a perfect, stylish and dazzlingly-virtuosic performance of Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto with not a breath, slur, or a hemi-demi-semiquaver (whatever that is) out of place.

Montero was next in the ring with a no-holds-barred version of Mozart’s lovely K449 Concerto in a full-bodied performance delivered by a feisty lady on a big modern concert grand piano: none of your plucking harpsichordal nonsense or anodyne fortepiano delicacy here. The blood throbbed in the veins of this 449 and I swear I heard Mozart sniggering with glee from another place.

Then the two women teamed up in Shostakovich’s First Concerto in which, after the haunting slow movement, they went gloriously bananas in an outrageous finale which lay somewhere between Cartoon Capers and the Simpsons, with stunning Zurich playing throughout. A cracking concert.