Handel's Water Music Reviews

The Press and Journal
Roddy Phillips
16 January 2012

The winning combination of the right programme and big names ensured the Music Hall in Aberdeen was packed on Saturday for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s first concert of the year.

The promise of the French baroque star Emmanuelle Haim helming the SCO through a programme of Rameau and Handel with the renowned Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling was just too good to miss.

Haim is a harpsichordist by training and she directed the SCO from the keyboard, mostly with a series of joyous, sharp movements, reduced at times to a small, but complex, hand gesture.

Her harpsichord and the impressive theorbo played by the blind lutenist Matthew Wadsworth may have been rather lost in the grand scheme of things but no one could doubt the authenticity and fire of the performances.

It was Rameau’s Suite from his opera Dardanus, that was the highlight for me. To hear this music played with such style and passion by the SCO directed by a French musician of Haim’s standing was almost miraculous.