★★★★☆
Wise musical minds used to argue that Robert Schumann was a gifted melodist but a terrible orchestrator, a composer whose symphonies were fundamentally flawed. No one believes that now, though, and when you hear Schumann’s music played the way the Scottish Chamber Orchestra does it, it’s hard to believe that anyone ever believed it in the first place.
All the complaints about Schumann’s orchestration vanish when it’s played, as in this concert, with such sleek transparency and perfect balance. The SCO used a smaller body of strings than the modern symphony orchestra. Combined with very selective use of vibrato, that makes an enormous difference to the sound. It even influences the way the winds and brass play and, in their performance of Schumann’s Overture,
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