SCO: Familiar Pleasures and Fresh Discoveries
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 1/7/2026
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor, André Cebrián and Maria Gomez, flute soloists
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra offered an evening that balanced the familiar with the more obscure. The first half paired Mozart’s youthful Symphony No. 20 in D major with a double flute concerto by the nineteenth-century flautist and composer Franz Doppler.
Early Mozart symphonies are, in my experience, more often encountered in boxed sets of complete recordings, where they can sound under-rehearsed and hurriedly dispatched. It was therefore a welcome surprise to hear this work given the kind of care and attention usually reserved for more substantial repertoire.
Eighteenth-century orchestral works in D major often come with an expectation of drums, trumpets and military brightness. Lesser performances can overplay those associations, becoming brash and shouty. The SCO avoided that entirely, presenting the music with admirable balance, clarity and detail. While this piece would never rank among the great works of Mozart’s later years, it offers a fascinating glimpse of a young composer beginning to move beyond the pervasive influence of his father.
Doppler’s double flute concerto is an odd fish: clearly conceived as a virtuosic showcase for the composer and, presumably, his brother. It has the character of a poly-stylistic pick-and-mix, dipping irreverently between dark minor-key colours and joyous frippery.
The two soloists played with infectious delight, clearly relishing the limelight. This was entertainment, pure and simple: expertly crafted, highly enjoyable, and making no pretence of being high art.
The second half opened with the overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a staple of the concert hall. Perhaps, given the rest of the programme, it felt a little too familiar. I did not sense quite the same enthusiasm from the orchestra here as I did elsewhere in the evening. There is little doubt that it is a great piece of music, but in this context it seemed somewhat overused: a ten-minute filler rather than a fully integrated part of the programme.
The final work of the evening was Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G major, the “Surprise”. Perhaps the real surprise is finding Haydn placed as the main feature of a concert programme. He has arguably been a victim of his own prolificacy: the sheer scale of his output across almost every classical form can feel overwhelming.
Yet this symphony is the work of a master craftsman at the height of his powers, and it is far more deserving of pole position than concert programming and audience trends generally allow. The performance had exactly the kind of enthusiasm that brings out the best in Haydn.
It was beautifully paced, especially in the second movement, which is too often treated ponderously in an effort to amplify the brief musical joke that gives the symphony its nickname. Here, the balance was excellent and the detail came through clearly. The woodwind writing in particular contains some lovely sectional moments, and these shone.
All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable evening’s entertainment. The programme struck an effective balance between virtuosic brilliance and tight ensemble playing, light and dark, and the familiar and the less familiar.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra were at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on Wednesday 1st of July as part of their annual tour of Highland venues.