WHATEVER drew the exceptionally large audience to the City Hall for the weekend concert in which the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was conducted by Raymond Leppard, they received a real treat in a performance of Faure's Requiem that, unusually, dispensed totally with languor, saccharine, and sentiment, and was the more powerful, emotionally, for its rather cool, eloquent and swift delivery. Though the brief contributions by the soloists - silvery soprano Nancy Argenta and the sonorous David Stephenson (Harlequin in Scottish Opera's Ariadne, brought in at the last moment to replace a voiceless Neal Davis) - were notable, principal attention focused on Ben Parry's SCO Chorus.
Their layout was unusual, splitting up the regular phalanx of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses in favour of rows which alternated male and female voices, presumably for a more homogeneous blend.
Whether that worked or not is debatable, but what was striking, in a beautifully sung Requiem, was the light, restrained, smooth and transparent performance of the chorus - interestingly, characteristics also of Parry's Dunedin Consort.
It was the best performance on a night where, in the all-Mozart first half, the SCO strings - in terms of their usual co-ordination, blended ensemble, unanimity of phrasing, and incisiveness of attack - were marginally, though critically, below par. Whether that was down to Leppard's conducting or, more worryingly, to the absence of the departed and decisive SCO leader, James Clark, I don't know. However, it's something to watch out for.
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