Music

Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Manze

City Halls, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

THE VISITS from Andrew Manze to conduct the SCO are always richly informative, and this diverse programme was no exception. At its heart was a performance of Mozart’s 1785 Piano Concerto No 19 with soloist Francesco Piemontesi, shortly to be recorded alongside his final one, the better known No 27 in B-flat, by the team onstage as a follow-up to their fine 2017 Linn label recording of Nos 25 & 26.

As Manze conceded, there are parts of the early work, particularly the Finale, that don’t sound much like Mozart at all, and from a composer allegedly no fan of her instrument, first flute Fiona Kelly had a lot to do. But equally it is not very hard to hear echoes of Mozart operas in both the second movement and in the final bars, which seem to pre-figure The Magic Flute. The is a precision delicacy to the Swiss pianist, but no lack of power when required, and he and Manze were in perfect alignment on the series of upward tonal steps in the first movement that draw the listener in.

The contrasting talents of later contemporaries Igor Stravinsky and Wilhelm Stenhammar bracketed the work. Guest principal viola Scott Dickinson, from the BBC Scottish, was straight into the fray at the start of Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, which is less a work for small string orchestra than a scaled-up string quartet. There is rhythmic fascination throughout the work, and if it has not inspired a dance-maker since its composition at the end of the Second World War, one can only wonder why.

Stenhammar’s Serenade in F might seem a stranger choice for a chamber orchestra, with its call for percussion and trombones, but it turned out to be ideally suited to what the conductor called the SCO’s “finesse”. For all that it is derivative, particularly in its somewhat meteorological Finale, there is some compelling orchestration. Its fault is perhaps that it peaks too early, its most charming music in the Canzonetta waltz and the Scherzo that follows.