Music SCO/Benedetti, Perth Concert Hall, Keith Bruce, four stars

It is all too rare to be part of such a full house at Perth Concert Hall for classical music, but when this week’s run of performances by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with violinist Nicola Benedetti ends at Glasgow City Halls on Friday evening, there will have been no better place to enjoy the music than at the newest venue on their itinerary.

The sparkling acoustic in Perth – and clear sightlines from every seat in the house – particularly suits orchestral music on this scale. With two of the greatest names in composition, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and a symphony by Mozart, on the programme, as well as the box office allure of Benedetti, it was small wonder the hall was busy.

There was another treat to begin, in contemporary American composer Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, a work for string orchestra that featured in the BBC SSO’s Edinburgh Festival concert with Marin Alsop in a Covid era big tent. It sounded even better here, unsurprisingly, as the SCO’s first viola Max Mandell led off the pizzicato plucking that gives the work its title. There was glowing bowed playing as well, in a piece that both echoes Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the rawer sound-world of Appalachian folk music.

It and the Mozart were directed from the violin by returned former orchestra leader – now a co-leader of the London Symphony Orchestra – Benjamin Marquise Gilmore. Symphony No 34 was not one of those given the Sir Charles Mackerras treatment in the Australian conductor’s definitive Mozart recordings with the SCO; it is a transitional work the young composer had in his luggage when he left Salzburg for Vienna that has come down to us in a possibly-incomplete three-movement form.

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Marquise Gilmore and his colleagues produced an account that suggested the greater works to come, but there is no getting around the fact that the symphony lacks the memorable melodic content they would feature.

As in other recent concerts by this partnership, Benedetti was credited as director as well as soloist for the concerto, and doubtless her interpretive input was to the fore in rehearsal. In performance, however, she was entirely focussed on the job in hand and the players looked again to Marquise Gilmore – the two violinists forged a productive relationship during his time at the SCO.

Featuring a first movement cadenza that saw Benedetti duetting with timpanist Louise Lewis Goodwin, this was often a dark-hued account of the work, particularly in the intense slow second movement, with its own crucial pizzicato strings, before the welcome release of the sprightly dance of the finale with its teasing changes of key.

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