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Schumann and Schubert/Mahler: Ilya Gringolts (violin), Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Joseph Swensen, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 25.4.2009 (SRT)

Schumann: Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Violin Concerto
Schubert arr. Mahler: Quartet in D minor, “Death and the Maiden”


This evening saw some of the most committed music making I have come across in a long time.  Above all it showcased the SCO strings in all their marvellous virtuosity and diversity, and not just in the second half.  Joseph Swensen, who has been enjoying something of a mini residency with the orchestra, conducted with Romantic ardour and exuded a hell-for-leather spirit in each work.  He had a vigorous but nuanced view of the Overture, Scherzo and Finale and allowed the strings to lean into each phrase in the first movement, progressing through the spidery Scherzo to the buoyant and celebratory finale.

The orchestra were joined by Ilya Gringolts for the concerto.  Hearing it played like this it is difficult to believe that Brahms and Joachim believed it to be an inferior work, infected by Schumann’s late mental decline.  Consequently publication of the concerto was suppressed for nearly 80 years after Schumann’s death, its premiere being given in Berlin in 1937.  The opening movement has an undeniably Romantic storminess to it, with passionate swirling strings in the first subject, offset by a gentler second.  Gringolts’ technical accomplishment was quite breathtaking as he undertook the incredibly difficult opening, featuring bars and bars of double and even triple stopping.  The wave of passion carried all along to the end of the movement before yielding to the song-like slow movement full of touching simplicity.  After this the finale carried something of a pompous strut and the soloist’s music became even more impressive.  Gringolts’ virtuosity was rewarded with a strong ovation, but I’d rather he hadn’t bothered with his spindly encore which, while undoubtedly technically impressive, had little purely musical value.

The most extraordinary work of the evening, however, was the Schubert/Mahler arrangement.  Interestingly, Mahler didn’t change a note of Schubert’s original: he merely expanded the forces and, occasionally, doubled the cello line with the double basses – but the work sounds as if it comes from a different universe.  The work is overlaid with lush Romantic passion, and more than a little Mahlerian angst, and it is truly astonishing what the simple expansion of numbers can do. The first movement had stridency and surging passion in abundance.  There was a maniacal pulse to the scherzo and throbbing passion to the finale, the major episode towards the end suggesting a promise of hope which is all the more tragic because it is denied.  However the second movement, the dark heart of the work, was the highlight of the whole evening.  The music was overlaid with smooth legato that tends to be missing from quartet performances and the sheer scale of the music took on a titanic stature through Swensen’s fervent reading.  After the searching song theme each variation carries a new wave of passion that left me feeling elated but drained at the end of the movement.  How must the players have felt?!  A marvellous evening.

Simon Thompson


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