Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Maxim Emelyanychev

Scotland: its lochs, its castles, its highlands, its haggis. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev are your travel guides for a musical evening in Caledonia. And yes, that’s possible without a single note on the bagpipes. In 1829, Felix Mendelssohn visited the ruins of the chapel where Mary Stuart had centuries earlier been crowned ‘Queen of Scots’. He was immediately inspired by the place. Years later he would translate that experience and the surrounding wilderness into his Symphony No. 3. With his brisk, boisterously fast movements, and blaring brass instruments that immediately have you waving the famous blue-and-white crossed Saltire flag. And yet this voyage of discovery in northern Britain begins in southern parts. In his work The Origin of Colour, the Glaswegian Jay Capperauld sets to music a short story by the Italian word wizard Italo Calvino. A Belgian premiere that gives even more colour to the evening.