THE names may have been familiar - Schubert, Schumann and Brahms - but some of the repertoire was refreshingly novel in this blitz of Austro-German romantic big guns by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under its principal guest conductor elect, Olari Elts.
The bouncy young Estonian lifted a potentially earthbound programme an inch or two above ground level. Schubert's relative rarity, the Overture in C 'In the Italian Style', sizzled with all the excitement the composer himself must have felt penning it in the immediate wake of Rossini's explosive debut in Vienna.
It shows in an exuberant playfulness, riddled with typical show-stopping Rossinian formulae, which Elts elicited with nimble clarity.
The other surprise came with Brahms' Serenade No 1, an absolute gem of a work heard here in its opulent orchestral version. For anyone still unimpressed by his symphonies, here was an enlightening panacea.
Among the obvious symphonic elements the skittish Minuets and a brief, whimsical stab at Beethoven in a second scherzo, introduced an uncommonly wry edge to this Brahms epic. But Elts and the SCO also captured moments of unexpected vision - an opening, for instance, as picturesquely pastoral as any that Mahler was soon to produce in abundance.
A minor disappointment came in the most familiar work - Schumann's Piano Concerto.
Artur Pizarro, replacing the published soloist, and generally a towering presence, too often let the music to draw into itself, especially its softest passages. Nor was his communication with Elts bang-on, the latter sometimes unsure of the pianist's intentions, the smooth running of the performance shuddering a little as a result.
SINGER Tam White has waited a long time for the chance to sing in front of a top class jazz big band.
He featured on every item in the most populist programme the SNJO have ever presented, an amalgam of blues, jazz and rhythm and blues that epitomised the singer's approach over the years.
Despite some recent respiratory problems, he was in good voice throughout, pacing himself nicely across a set that ranged from his own semi-surreal The Dream to classic r'n'b songs from the repertoire of Ray Charles and Big Joe Williams, many of which employed arrangements by the late Thad Jones.
It was fascinating to hear songs he has sung for years - Smack Dab in the Middle, (You Made Your) Move to Soon, Every Day I Have the Blues, Let the Good Times Roll - remade with the colour and impact of the big band instrumentation, and his own songs also came over well.
The SNJO continue to impress not only in the quality of their performances, but in their ability to produce splendidly idiomatic ensemble playing and soloing.
WHILE Jacob Karlzon set the ball rolling on the Jazz From Sweden festival earlier in the week, this concert marked the high-profile launch of the event with two of Sweden's biggest jazz names. EST have crossed over in audience terms, and ensured that the Fruitmarket would be well filled with an approving audience.
If the trio of Esbjörn Svensson (piano), Dan Berglund (bass) and Magnus Öström (drums) have won a following beyond the hard-core jazz crowd, it is not on the basis of giving that audience a sanitised, easily-digested version of their music. Their characteristic rolling melodies and repeating rhythmic grooves were well in evidence here, but they also veered off into highly abstract freely improvised sections, replete with spacey electronic interventions.
The meat of the set was drawn from their recent Tuesday Wonderland album, in which the pianist avowedly drew on inspiration from J S Bach, and fragments of Bach-ian melody emerged amid their rock-inflected contemporary jazz.
They produced ample intensity and invention, although the music was overly repetitious and a little static in developmental terms at times.
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