SCO Haydn & Schubert Queen's Hall Edinburgh 15th January 2026 Review
Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Haydn & Schubert matinee with Lorenza Borrani at the Queen's Hall this afternoon was a well-attended event that proved once again just how popular these matinee concerts have become. For many people, they are obviously a welcome change to coming out in the dark, and now cold, winter’s evenings.
As it so often does for the SCO, this well-curated programme (below) managed to have a mixture of works by well known composers and for most of us (I presume) something new.
ProgrammeHAYDN Symphony No.56 in C
SCHNITTKE Concerto Grosso No.1
SCHUBERT Symphony No.8 ‘Unfinished’
Starting with the more familiar is always a good idea, and today that was music composed by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), a man who developed and refined what many people consider to be the format of the symphony as we know it today as well as doing the same for the string quartet. To create a set of rules that have lasted for almost 300 years is, by any standard, a remarkable event.
Symphony No.56 in C was the creation of a man not only very secure in his own abilities as a composer, but also one very secure in his employment as a court musician to the fabulously wealthy Esterházy court/Prince Nikolaus (both in Vienna and what is now Hungary). Haydn clearly knew what his employer wanted from both himself and the court orchestra but still, here, he took the opportunity with this work to highlight just what this orchestra was capable of.
As you might expect this work opens with the full sounds of courtly pomp and splendour (it also makes specific use of a trumpet and horn section) that you would expect to hear at a royal court and somehow Haydn has the ability to somehow take a modern listener back in time to a royal court where extravagance was the order of the day. This almost brash opening is soon in the second movement replaced by melodic calm before once returning to brasher musical highlights.
After the familiar came, for me, the new sounds of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and the wonderful soundscape of Concerto Grosso No.1 (1976-77). Given that although the work of Alfred Schnittke and his musical talent was well recognised within the USSR, his music was rarely permitted to be heard outside of the then Soviet Block. By many people Schnittke was widely considered to be the man who was the musical heir to Shostakovich, and, yes, you can clearly hear those elements in this work, but Concerto Grosso No.1 is so much more than just that.
This is one of those works that really defies the description of a review, it is a work that you have to hear performed live, a work that you have to allow yourself to be immersed in. When someone decided to put a harpsichord and electronic keyboard together with strings and move effortlessly across musical time periods and styles, you know that there is something very special happening. Despite his musical isolation from so much that was going on around him in the larger outside world, Alfred Schnittke was clearly not out of touch with things; perhaps his work as a film composer helped in this respect.
Again, on familiar musical ground, the last work today SCHUBERT Symphony No.8 ‘Unfinished’ was, over its two completed movements, a little bit like hearing two sides of a coin. Both were clearly part of the same object, but at times they were almost mirror images of one another as they constantly shifted from dark to light (and vice versa). At moments, this was a little bit like watching dark storm clouds clear to allow moments of clear sky and sunshine through before covering the sky up once more.
Schubert (1797-1828) left six of his thirteen symphonies unfinished, and why he did so with this one has never really been answered. Perhaps it was his health, which when this one was composed in 1822, was poor. Perhaps he just got more interested in new musical ideas. We will never really know why. Listening to these finished movements though, they just sound so complete together that maybe there was simply nothing else here musically for Schubert to really say and, without realising it, he had actually broken free of the constraints of what form a symphony should take.
Directing this programme of music and performing also was Italian violinist Lorenza Borrani.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
As it so often does for the SCO, this well-curated programme (below) managed to have a mixture of works by well known composers and for most of us (I presume) something new.
ProgrammeHAYDN Symphony No.56 in C
SCHNITTKE Concerto Grosso No.1
SCHUBERT Symphony No.8 ‘Unfinished’
Starting with the more familiar is always a good idea, and today that was music composed by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), a man who developed and refined what many people consider to be the format of the symphony as we know it today as well as doing the same for the string quartet. To create a set of rules that have lasted for almost 300 years is, by any standard, a remarkable event.
Symphony No.56 in C was the creation of a man not only very secure in his own abilities as a composer, but also one very secure in his employment as a court musician to the fabulously wealthy Esterházy court/Prince Nikolaus (both in Vienna and what is now Hungary). Haydn clearly knew what his employer wanted from both himself and the court orchestra but still, here, he took the opportunity with this work to highlight just what this orchestra was capable of.
As you might expect this work opens with the full sounds of courtly pomp and splendour (it also makes specific use of a trumpet and horn section) that you would expect to hear at a royal court and somehow Haydn has the ability to somehow take a modern listener back in time to a royal court where extravagance was the order of the day. This almost brash opening is soon in the second movement replaced by melodic calm before once returning to brasher musical highlights.
After the familiar came, for me, the new sounds of Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) and the wonderful soundscape of Concerto Grosso No.1 (1976-77). Given that although the work of Alfred Schnittke and his musical talent was well recognised within the USSR, his music was rarely permitted to be heard outside of the then Soviet Block. By many people Schnittke was widely considered to be the man who was the musical heir to Shostakovich, and, yes, you can clearly hear those elements in this work, but Concerto Grosso No.1 is so much more than just that.
This is one of those works that really defies the description of a review, it is a work that you have to hear performed live, a work that you have to allow yourself to be immersed in. When someone decided to put a harpsichord and electronic keyboard together with strings and move effortlessly across musical time periods and styles, you know that there is something very special happening. Despite his musical isolation from so much that was going on around him in the larger outside world, Alfred Schnittke was clearly not out of touch with things; perhaps his work as a film composer helped in this respect.
Again, on familiar musical ground, the last work today SCHUBERT Symphony No.8 ‘Unfinished’ was, over its two completed movements, a little bit like hearing two sides of a coin. Both were clearly part of the same object, but at times they were almost mirror images of one another as they constantly shifted from dark to light (and vice versa). At moments, this was a little bit like watching dark storm clouds clear to allow moments of clear sky and sunshine through before covering the sky up once more.
Schubert (1797-1828) left six of his thirteen symphonies unfinished, and why he did so with this one has never really been answered. Perhaps it was his health, which when this one was composed in 1822, was poor. Perhaps he just got more interested in new musical ideas. We will never really know why. Listening to these finished movements though, they just sound so complete together that maybe there was simply nothing else here musically for Schubert to really say and, without realising it, he had actually broken free of the constraints of what form a symphony should take.
Directing this programme of music and performing also was Italian violinist Lorenza Borrani.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
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