Maxim Emelyanychev’s appointment to the SCO is a masterstroke
Four-foot gobbets of orange fire belched into the Glasgow twilight. Walk south from Buchanan Street subway station, to St. George’s Tron Church, at St. George’s (now Nelson Mandela) Place. There, you will encounter a Blazing Bagpiper, firing occasional flames from three red hot drones. A tempo. No kidding.
I belong to Glasgow. For ten years, as a duty legal aid lawyer, I defended the ingenious, engaging miscreants of the city in Magistrate and Sheriff courts. I never could bring myself to think of clients as criminals. In Pao Alto, most would have been hailed as inventive geniuses, fronting IPOs, not picking up £50 fines with time to pay. Surely, I’d seen every stunt a Glasgow punter’s ingenuity has to offer? Was this bagpipe inferno a breach of the peace?
Nope. On this chilly, darkening, November evening, while citizens of the Dear Green Place scurried by, to one of the upscale watering holes that litter reborn Glasgow’s city centre, here was musical improvisation on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
A cheery highland air drifted across the street. The piper squeezed his bag. The drones transformed into blow torches, liberating pulsing flames, floating high and free for seconds before being spent, every time the lilting tune demanded a blaw. World weary passers by simply gave the bagpiper a wide berth. In New York, a fire truck would have sirened up the street and put him out.
“ ‘Scuse me, pal. Has youse got a licence for yon flamethrower thingy, by the way?” The self-styled Cam McAzie – The Badpiper, doesn’t do elf and safety. Normally officious enforcement goons let him be. He is, after all, just the most spectacular of Buchanan Street’s teeming population of metal-painted mime artists and demented grannies. Welcome home.
Now let me introduce you to Scotland’s latest musical pyrotechnician, Russian harpsichordist and conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, 31, a student of Nizhny Novogorod Choral College, Balakirev State Music College and Moscow State. Conservatory, where he studied under Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
In a far-sighted move, Maestro Emelyanychev was appointed principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in September. On his debut in the post, he was intent on setting fire to the scores of Philippe Hersant, Sergei Prokofiev and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Glasgow’s City Halls.
The Maestro and the Chamber Orchestra are made for each other. He, on the cusp of global recognition, the SCO a highly skilled ensemble with a growing reputation. Robin Ticciati, the previous principal conductor, now music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera, was able during his four years in post, to build on the SCO’s already high standing. Maestro Emelyanychev’s appointment should lift the ensemble to a higher level.
Edinburgh based SCO does not punch above its weight. It already has plenty of weight of its own, thank you very much. So, what does the new Maestro add to the offering? Deep musical insight and gutsy brio. That’s what. Of the programme, Mozart’s 41st (Jupiter) C Major Symphony was the most familiar. It has been one of my favourite works since 1964 when I bought a Klemperer recording and wore it out. Good test for the new kid.
The last movement is, effectively, a heroic summation of Mozart’s life – tentative beginning, developing themes, towering emotional highs, mournful string passage lows, minor key diversions, rabbit warrens of recapitulation, shuddering tutti cataclsyms, then a celestially triumphant conclusion in home key, C major. Mozart, finis. A test track, indeed.
Maestro Emelyanychev illuminated the score with fresh colour, insights on tempi that gave new meaning to familiar passages, urging his ensemble to super-human effort. Crystal clear articulation of each motif was delivered.
He does not use a baton. He does not heed a baton. Maestro Emelyanychev IS a baton – personified. Seemingly possessed by the music, every movement of his body, head, arms and hands carries a clear instruction to his musicians.
A raised left hand, the index finger extending towards the thumb, coaxes a sharpening of tone from the strings, a flattened right hand heralds a softening, a turn of the head lifts a phrase from the woodwind above the orchestral melee. Moto perpetuo.
Leopold Stokowski, the Polish/British conductor famous for Walt Disney’s 1940 Fantasia, first appears in shot, a white-tie silhouette on a high rostrum, colours swirling from his hands and baton in sync with the music, as the opening chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue sweep over the audience. Many were no doubt movie-goers to whom Bach was unfamiliar. Maestro Stokowski and Walt Disney (just think, this was only his third movie) were hell bent on a mission to make classical music meaningful to untutored ears.
Neither of Maestro Emelyanychev’s audiences – in front or behind – could be in any doubt about what this piece of Mozart meant to him. The finale of the Jupiter, Molto Allegro, proved his ideal showcase. Believe it or not, Mozart’s autobiographical apotheosis starts with a phrase of only four notes, C, D, F and E, each a semibreve occupying all four beats of the 4/4 time-signature bar.
Nothing could be simpler. What can anyone make of that? Of course, Mozart is about to hang on those simplest of notes complex musical tapestry of the most outstanding beauty. He has the balls to show his bare frame to the audience before he does. “Look what I’m about to do with this!” Show-off.
In recent times, I think only Austrian conductor, Nikolas Harnoncourt – for my money the most insightful Mozart conductor of the era; watch the documentary on his collaboration with Lang Lang performing Mozart’s piano concertos on Medici TV if you don’t believe me – has come as close as Maestro Emelyanychev to putting the complexity of Mozart’s part writing so compellingly on display. I hope the relationship forged with Glasgow based recording label, Linn, will deliver great things for the Maestro and the SCO. His talents are deserving of the showcase.
The mixed repertoire on the night was welcome. Audiences – that’s me – need to be led from familiar pastures to new. SCO has a proud track record of introducing and commissioning the works of contemporary composers – Sir James MacMillan, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Sally Beamish, Karin Rehnqvist, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Hafliði Hallgrímsson and Lotta Wennäkoski.
Philippe Hersant’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, commissioned in 1997 for the Symphonic Orchestra of Nancy, was an interesting introductory choice. It is an academic exercise in making use of motif, colour and rhythm, in compact form. I took the trouble to listen to the work again – twice, actually – afterwards, but could not engage. I get the developmental point, but it was emotionless. Doubtless, my fault.
Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor was a better-known favourite. Soloist, Carolin Widmann, professor of music at Leipzig’s University of Music and Theatre, travels widely and her commitment to this dramatic concerto matched that of the conductor at the rostrum. The performance was quite a spectacle. SCO would be wise to build on the relationship as Fräulein Widmann went down a bomb with the Glasgow audience.
The encore politically incorrect clapping hands demanded was – seemingly grudgingly – delivered. The conductor – impromptu, and doubltess feeling threatened – sat down at his safe-space piano and accompanied a Ravel violin sonata with the violinist. It was spellbindingly beautiful, partly on account of its spontaneity. If anyone in the hall had any lingering doubts about the range of their new principal conductor’s abilities, that enchanted five minutes put them to rest.
The joy of attending this debut of a conductor, at the threshold of a relationship with an orchestra that promises so much for both, was as much in anticipation of future heights to be conquered as appreciation of those scaled on the night. And that future? Cam McAzie’s Concerto for Burning Badpiper, Orchestra and Fire Extinguisher. Of course! What, as they say in Buchanan Street, could possibly go wrong?