Scotland

Our rating

3

Jessica Duchen

Published: November 20, 2023 at 11:31 am

Our review

Listening to this album fresh from my gloriously sunny week in the Highlands rather brought home the matter of climate change. Mendelssohn’s experience of Scotland was altogether stormier, and in this vivid recording of his ‘Scottish’ Symphony from the Västerås Sinfonietta and Simon Crawford-Phillips, you can almost feel the wind shivering across the lochs, or ghosts in the ruined chapel at Holyrood. It’s neither the most polished account to be found, nor the best balanced – the small violin section is too easily overwhelmed by the woodwind and brass in the louder sections – but it is a vigorous and extrovert interpretation. The recording matches the symphony with two contemporary takes on the Scottish landscape. Helen Grime is the only one of the three composers who is actually Scottish. Her two-part Elegiac Inflections includes the filtering of Scottish folk ideas through a personal sieve, transforming them into abstract ideas; the Västerås Sinfonietta gives a pretty good account of her challenging, Knussen-influenced score. Finally there’s Peter Maxwell Davies, who spent the later decades of his life living on Orkney (which has helped make the place a magnet for British musicians). Since his death in 2016, his music has perhaps inevitably begun to recede from view, but his Strathclyde Concerto is among his most immediate responses to the harsh-yet-beautiful landscapes that surrounded him. The ensemble and Crawford-Phillips create within it a range of strong atmospheres, carefully spotlighting the instrumental solos and generally making a persuasive case for keeping the work in the repertoire. The recorded sound quality is strong and suitably cool. Jessica Duchen

Scotland – Mendelssohn: ‘Scottish’ Symphony; Helen Grime: Elegiac Inflections; Maxwell Davies: Strathclyde Concerto No. 10

Västerås Sinfonietta/Simon Crawford-Phillips

dbProductions dbCD210 78:16 mins

Listening to this album fresh from my gloriously sunny week in the Highlands rather brought home the matter of climate change. Mendelssohn’s experience of Scotland was altogether stormier, and in this vivid recording of his ‘Scottish’ Symphony from the Västerås Sinfonietta and Simon Crawford-Phillips, you can almost feel the wind shivering across the lochs, or ghosts in the ruined chapel at Holyrood. It’s neither the most polished account to be found, nor the best balanced – the small violin section is too easily overwhelmed by the woodwind and brass in the louder sections – but it is a vigorous and extrovert interpretation.
The recording matches the symphony with two contemporary takes on the Scottish landscape. Helen Grime is the only one of the three composers who is actually Scottish. Her two-part Elegiac Inflections includes the filtering of Scottish folk ideas through a personal sieve, transforming them into abstract ideas; the Västerås Sinfonietta gives a pretty good account of her challenging, Knussen-influenced score.
Finally there’s Peter Maxwell Davies, who spent the later decades of his life living on Orkney (which has helped make the place a magnet for British musicians). Since his death in 2016, his music has perhaps inevitably begun to recede from view, but his Strathclyde Concerto is among his most immediate responses to the harsh-yet-beautiful landscapes that surrounded him. The ensemble and Crawford-Phillips create within it a range of strong atmospheres, carefully spotlighting the instrumental solos and generally making a persuasive case for keeping the work in the repertoire. The recorded sound quality is strong and suitably cool. Jessica Duchen

Journalist and Critic, BBC Music Magazine

Jessica Duchen studied music at Cambridge University and was the classical music correspondent for The Independent from 2004 to 2016. She has also written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, BBC Music Magazine and the JC, among others. Jessica Duchen has written librettos include numerous choral works and operas for the composer Roxanna Panufnik, including Silver Birch, commissioned by Garsington Opera and shortlisted for an International Opera Award in 2018. Two more works based on stories by Oscar Wilde were commissioned for Garsington’s Youth Company, The Happy Princess with composer Paul Fincham (2019) and The Selfish Giant with John Barber, which fell victim to lockdown, this has been postponed to 2021.