SCO & Ivan Podyomov, Glasgow review: 'wild creativity'

It’s a measure of the high regard the Scottish Chamber Orchestra clearly has for its associate composer Jay Capperauld that they’d structure an entire concert (well, almost) around a new work by him. His arrestingly titled Bruckner’s Skull was more concerned with the exhumed craniums of Beethoven and Schubert, which Bruckner reputedly cradled in macabre reverence when they were transferred from one Viennese cemetery to another. And it was bookended in the concert by – you guessed it – music by Beethoven and Schubert themselves, in this case their respective first symphonies.

A bold concept, then, but did Capperauld’s new piece warrant its pivotal role? Without a doubt. It was a cunningly imagined work, blending a fair dose of macabre, nerve-jangling grotesquerie (and a fair few nods to Bernard Herrmann too) with a genuinely moving sense of nobility and grandeur, from obsessively repeated gestures (which sounded uncannily like Steve Reich at one point) to faltering cadences and fragile, arcing melodies. Yes, it was a portrait of a deeply damaged mind, but it was never sensationalist or exploitative, taking instead a touchingly compassionate viewpoint. And Capperauld can hardly have hoped for a more committed, perceptive account than the one he received from conductor Maxim Emelyanychev: it was sober and balanced, but never shied away from the composer’s more extreme gestures and sounds.

Buoyant and buzzing with energy, Emelyanychev’s Beethoven First Symphony provided the ideal foil to Capperauld’s brooding darkness, while Schubert’s First was similarly full of bustle and vigour. In between, Russian oboist Ivan Podyomov also made a strong impression in Mozart’s Oboe Concerto: he was a modest, unshowy presence, but his gloriously smooth, supple playing spoke for itself, both in the Concerto and in his encore of the finale from Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, delivered with intimate warmth with three SCO string principals. A concert of wild creativity and profound insights, delivered in authoritative performances.