Symphonic Mahler isn’t exactly home territory for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra: this is a band that made its name playing elegant, vivacious classicism, surely worlds apart from furrowed-brow late Romanticism. Or is it? Since the arrival of Robin Ticciati as principal conductor, the SCO has been treading new ground without ever losing sight of its starting point. This performance of Mahler’s Fourth had traces of other recent projects: the acute detail and vivid colours of the orchestra’s Berlioz recordings; the grand sweep and expressive depth of its Schumann symphony cycle.
Yet it was vintage SCO, too, with the orchestra’s heritage etched into every poised phrase, every uncluttered tutti. The Fourth is the most lightly scored of all Mahler’s symphonies, but inevitably the chamber forces produced a more petite sound than the work is used to. Ticciati has his work cut out mustering enough heft from the strings for fully fledged climaxes, but it only really mattered once or twice.
More often it was a treat to hear the woodwinds so prominently, full of chatty character. There was a conversational, lucid quality to Ticciati’s account, and the stripped-back simplicity of the third movement was breathtaking: few orchestral string sections would dare to play with such fragility. Mezzo Karen Cargill was soloist in the Wunderhorn finale, bringing gorgeously dark colours to the rapturous close of each stanza. It was a wistful, autumnal vision of paradise.
The concert opened with a harp concerto by Toshio Hosokawa. Commissioned by the SCO, Aeolus is a reworking of the composer’s Re-turning (2001), in which harpist Naoko Yoshino represents mankind and the orchestra is nature and the universe. It’s a fastidiously finespun score: sounds are wispy and intangible; shimmery fragments emerge then are gone. Listen casually and the atmosphere is static, borderline boring; listen closely and the shifting textures are iridescent.
