Chamber programme of French song and chamber music by Poulenc, Chausson and Fauré with soprano Carolyn Sampson, pianist Maxim Emelyanychev and a SCO quintet.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra are at The Queens Hall on Sunday 21 March with Songs of Light & Longing, a chamber programme of French song and chamber music. It's a matinee, starting at 3pm, and the SCO bill it as an elegant afternoon weaving together some of the most poetic and intimate works from the French tradition.
Francis Poulenc takes up a good deal of the running. La Courte Paille opens with playful charm, while his Violin Sonata reveals a fiery, incisive voice shaped by wartime urgency, and his Cello Sonata brings wit, warmth and expressive clarity. Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle deepens the mood with yearning lines suspended in rich instrumental colour, and Fauré's La Bonne Chanson closes with lyrical delicacy and the shimmer of French late Romantic song.
Those pieces are brought to life by soprano Carolyn Sampson, pianist Maxim Emelyanychev and a quintet of SCO players. The mix of voice, piano and a small string group keeps the whole thing in that chamber music territory — intimate enough to hear the detail in the singing and the individual lines of the strings, rather than a full orchestra filling the hall. It's a programme that moves from the playful to the yearning, and then settles into the late Romantic shimmer of Fauré.
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It's a Sunday afternoon slot, so it works as a standalone trip to the Queens Hall without needing to clear your whole day. The concert starts at 3pm, and you'll find the full details and tickets over at the SCO's website: https://www.sco.org.uk/events/songs-of-light-and-longing/
