Review of Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Robert Levin in Perth Concert Hall

Nov 8 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

LAST Wednesday’s Scottish Chamber Orchestra concert in Perth Concert Hall was one to savour with the greatest pleasure.

From their very earliest days they have had the knack of playing Mozart with subtlety and strength.

As proven many times the classical sized music of Schubert and Beethoven fits them like a glove or a gauntlet.

The catalyst of the great performances they gave that evening was Robert Levin.

As a forte pianist of renown, head of university departments in piano and theory, he has brought back the idea of improvised embellishments and cadenzas and this delight in spontaneity pervaded his direction of the SCO.

And you can only take flight from the moment if you have thoroughly organised before.

The opening movement of Mozart’s Divertimento K138 showed the SCO’s refined airiness combined with tensile strength. The eye-opener was the Andante: here Robert Levin made it a more significant piece, giving it a larger, more bass oriented sound turning it from pleasing, small scale musing to something immensely likeable, more public and operatic. The finale was a true presto: lightening fast, but not at the expense of perceptive articulation, plus wit in the episodes.

Already the audience was warming to Robert Levin and he had an extra amount of appreciative applause as he came out to conduct Schubert’s Symphony No.3. This, too, had a performance of vitality both rhythmic and melodic, winds and timpani, natural horns and trumpets adding their colours end excitement. The Allegretto was a gem: Robert Levin bringing out the changes in colours in the string writing. The Scherzo, pace the Menuetto heading, danced along merrily, with the drollest Trio of additional yodelling woodwind!

The finale had all the joie de vivre of the eighteen-year-old Schubert.

Robert Levin introduced Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3, explaining why the piano was lidless and tail out, the importance of improvisation of cadenzas and embellishments and promising “sulphur from the platform”. From the opening phrase drama was the keyword.

With plangently pathetic woodwind phrases his playing was demonically forthright with a Beethovenian rant as a cadenza.

The Largo was very freely played, sometimes a little mannered, and after a slightly odd flute and bassoon duet, had a magical end.

Impish fun was at the heart of the rumbustious humour in Beethoven’s Rondo.

Such was the applause that Robert Levin returned to give an encore: Beethoven’s Bagatelle Op.33 No.7 – a presto played with vivacity to make the piano rattle. As an audience member commented: A true musician.

Ian Stuart-Hunter