Music

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

five stars

THERE will be many more concerts celebrating the 60th birthday of Scotland’s most celebrated composer Sir James MacMillan before this year is ended, but this one set the standard very high indeed. I still vividly recall the reaction of The Herald’s Michael Tumelty to the premiere of the young composer’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, a major choral work and a piece this newspaper’s critic felt cemented its creator’s reputation, not least because it was commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on television during Holy Week in 1993.

It has lost none of its power and directness, its bold mix of English, Latin and Hebrew texts performed with pristine clarity by the SCO chorus here. There was a very fresh, young look to the choir and it was audible too, particularly in the pure-toned sopranos at the opening of the work. When they were to the fore, the men were just was impressive, with powerful tenors and real heft from the basses on Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani. The playing from the low strings of the orchestra, key to the sound of the work, was magnificent. It was perhaps possible to imagine a less rounded performance with more edge, but that is a question of taste rather than quality.

There was no lack of bite in the percussion concerto Veni Veni Emmanuel in the first half. Many of the vast number of performances of it around the world have been by soloist Colin Currie, and his budget-price Naxos label recording made it the first piece of contemporary classical music in many a CD collection. Skipping around the composer/conductor between his clusters of tuned and untuned instruments, Currie found every colour and nuance in the score, with the rest of the musicians onstage at full stretch for the duration of the work as well.

MacMillan chose to open with a nod to two of his influences in Part’s Cantus in Memorium Benjamin Britten - very much the calm before the storm.