SCO & Isabelle van Keulen, Edinburgh review: 'bracingly vivid'

The somewhat hair-raising backstory to Robert Schumann’s only Violin Concerto – involving mental breakdown, concealment, seances, Nazis and more – can threaten to overwhelm what’s actually rather an awkward, fragile piece that requires quite a bit of slack-cutting from its listeners.

Is it, as Schumann’s widow and its dedicatee decided, a fatally flawed product of the composer’s mental instability, and therefore not suitable for public consumption? Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen doesn’t seem to think so, placing the concerto boldly as the centrepiece of her concert directing the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

She gave a thoroughly committed, no-nonsense account, unshowy but deeply alive to Schumann’s sometimes uneasy, even clumsy lyricism. She was nimble and bracingly vivid, with some particularly rich G-string playing in the slow movement (and beautiful duetting with SCO principal cellist Philip Higham), though her tempo in the plodding finale seemed even more sluggish than the speed at which it’s usually taken.

Perhaps van Keulen’s very unshowiness didn’t make a strong enough case for the piece. But then again, it was a gratifyingly honest, authentic account that never tried to conceal the concerto’s oddities and idiosyncracies, and was all the more powerful for that.

If van Keulen was out front as soloist for the Schumann Concerto, she directed from the leader’s seat for the rest of the programme – and the SCO was thrillingly alive and responsive as a conductorless, orchestra-sized chamber group as a result. Their opening Beethoven Coriolan Overture was powerful and gritty, but always clearly spoken, while van Keulen ensured that the bubbling energy of Schubert’s teenage Third Symphony was always evident, from a joyfully surging opening movement to a slightly deranged tarantella of a finale.

The intricate Starburst by US composer Jessie Montgomery put the SCO strings through their paces in music that felt like a burst of cold, clean air. Plenty to provoke, and much to entertain too.

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