Nakariakov, SCO, Emelyanychev, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh review - a frenzied feast of contemporary classics

What a delight to see an almost full Queen’s Hall for a programme solely of contemporary music. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s New Dimensions series, launched this season, sees a host of newer classical works performed and appears to be drawing in regular audience members as well as a younger crowd.

Opening with James MacMillan’s Tryst, the orchestra wove together the sometimes angular strands of the music with concise conducting from principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. They were then joined by trumpet soloist Sergei Nakariakov for Jorg Widmann’s invigorating trumpet concerto Ad Absurdum. This is a piece which makes demands, both physically and intellectually. Not only is the solo part incredibly fast, it involves a whole host of embouchure techniques from the soloist. No stranger to the work – he gave it its premiere in 2006 – Nakariakov performed with dazzling virtuosity as well as hugely impressive breath control! There are moments of frenzy in the orchestral writing too, with a particularly exciting timpani solo from timpanist Louise Goodwin.

Widmann’s music also opened the second half. His Con Brio, composed in 2008, was commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of a complete series of Beethoven’s symphonies. This piece accompanied the seventh and eighth symphonies, and though no direct quotes of Beethoven’s are used, Widmann employs the same orchestration some of Beethoven’s compositional characteristics can be heard throughout the work. Titled after one of Beethoven’s most used musical markings, Emelyanychev indeed led the orchestra with vigour, through stark dynamic contrasts and moments of driven velocity.

Ending with John Adams’s Chamber Symphony, inspired by the Schoenberg work of the same name, is, in the composer’s words, "shockingly difficult to play". Its complex chromatic passages and careering cross rhythms were expertly navigated in this performance under Emelyanychev’s precise baton. The first movement, titled "Mongrel Airs" – after a critic’s comment that Adams’s music lacked breeding – featured jaunty string playing and tight percussion, while the second, "Aria with Walking Bass", opened with brooding tones from the brass against a stealthily walking bass, before the music’s complex layers increase throughout the 15-piece orchestra, with different instruments rising to the fore. Energetic syncopation was abundant in the final movement, aptly titled "Roadrunner". Flurried woodwind and punchy brass were juxtaposed with more tender, bowed passages in the strings before the piece continued to bubble up to an exhilarating yet abrupt finale.

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