Prepare to be entranced by a series of musical wonders as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) presents its highly anticipated 2024-2025 season. From the evocative strains of Prokofiev and Brahms to the timeless beauty of Fauré's Requiem, the SCO promises an unforgettable experience that spans genres and centuries. With virtuoso performances by acclaimed artists such as Aylen Pritchin, Rachel Podger, and many others, each event captures the essence of artistic excellence and emotional depth. Join us as we explore the highlights and unique offerings of this remarkable season.

Echoes of Harmony: A Journey Through SCO's Captivating 2024-2025 Season

The hushed expectation of Gruber’s glorious ‘Silent Night’ forms the Christmas concert’s beating heart, alongside Vaughan Williams’s folk-inspired ‘The Truth from Above’, the mystery of Judith Weir’s ‘Drop down, ye heavens’, and the rich, cosmic power of Tavener’s mystical hymn. SCO musician Kana Kawashima intersperses intimate solo violin reflections.

Silent Night

Greyfriars Kirkyard Cemetery Edinburgh

SCO clarinettists Maximiliano Martín and William Stafford shine in Franz Krommer’s Double Concerto, while Haydn transports us to a Caribbean desert island with his dramatic opera overture. Mozart’s friend Paul Wranitzky’s Symphony in D provides a suitably flamboyant finale.

EPSG:4326

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Holy Trinity Church Hall

The Queen's Hall

Buchanan Galleries

Darkly lyrical and bristling with devilish energy, Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto is the ideal musical match for the exceptional talents of violinist Aylen Pritchin – a close musical collaborator and friend of conductor Maxim Emelyanychev – who so impressed SCO audiences with his Brahms Concerto in 2023.

Prokofiev & Brahms

His Majesty's Theatre

The Usher Hall

Celebrate the coming festivities with one of music’s most uplifting seasonal creations. Originally conceived for Leipzig’s Christmas celebrations in 1734, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio retains all its joy and colour nearly three centuries later, in vivid musical depictions of the Nativity and the Shepherds’ adoration. The Oratorio’s resplendent choruses and intimate solo arias continue to inspire and delight today, whatever your personal beliefs.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Join the SCO and RCS players for music of charm and opulence, from Scottish composer Helen Grime’s dramatic, virtuosic Elegiac Inflections to the sunny optimism of the Octet-Partita by Hummel, a contemporary and friend of Beethoven. Florent Schmitt was an associate of Ravel, and combines dreaminess and fantastical playfulness in his captivating Lied & Scherzo, while Caplet summons the mysteries of the Near East in the sensual evocations of his Suite Persane.

From Scotland to Persia

Elegant, buoyant and gloriously witty, Mozart’s Flute Concerto puts paid to the composer’s spurious claims that he couldn’t stand the instrument. In the hands of the SCO’s charismatic Principal Flute André Cebrián, it forms the sparkling centrepiece to a bold and richly flavoured concert conducted by the Orchestra’s inspirational Principal Guest Conductor, Andrew Manze.

Mozart Flute Concerto

Leith Theatre

Mozart meets Miles Davis in this kaleidoscopic showpiece from contemporary Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi. She draws influences from both iconic musicians in this sparkling piece, devised according to Tarrodi’s own unique colour palette: Serenade in Seven Colours transports you through purples to reds to yellows – via tendrils of melody and shimmering textures. Alongside Tarrodi’s Lucioles, inspired by the flight of fireflies, performed live in November, discover a magical and deeply moving sound world of sonorous wind and glittering percussion.

TARRODI Serenade in Seven Colours

Head north – to Norway’s dramatic fjords and the natural wonders of Finland and Sweden – in the company of California-born conductor Ryan Bancroft and one of today’s most exciting young pianists.

Grieg Piano Concerto

Swedish composer Anders Hillborg’s 2021 Viola Concerto is a thrilling, high-energy ride through glistening sonic landscapes, and it’s performed by its dedicatee, the remarkable British violist Lawrence Power. Fellow Swede Madeleine Isaksson, meanwhile, transports us to the raw, ethereal beauty of her country’s far north.

Borealis

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Exquisite miniatures from a rediscovered voice in English music. Born in London to an English mother and a father from Sierra Leone, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was famed in his lifetime and much admired by figures including Edward Elgar. He wrote his lyrical Novelletten when he was just 27, partly to showcase his own prowess as a concert violinist: the result is a collection of richly imagined gems that blend captivating virtuosity and hearty richness from an orchestra of strings. Discover Coleridge-Taylor’s elegant evocations online, to complement the live performances of his Violin Concerto in October.

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Novelletten (Nos 1 & 3)

When Mozart wrote his 20th Piano Concerto, he directed the orchestra and played the piano himself. Sadly, he can’t be here today – but in his place, we’ve got a real genius: the multitalented Lera Auerbach. She’ll play this great concerto (if you’ve seen Amadeus, you’ll already know it), conduct sparkling masterpieces by Mozart’s friend and mentor Haydn, and bang the drum for Mozart in her own composition Eterniday: a very personal homage to one of the world’s greatest ever composers.

 Plays Mozart And Haydn

Perth Concert Hall

From earthy folk melodies to richly Romantic passions – what better way to launch a new Season than in the company of Czech maestro Antonín Dvořák and charismatic Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev?

A Celebration of Dvořák

From earthy folk melodies to richly Romantic passions – what better way to launch a new season of discoveries than in the company of Czech maestro Antonín Dvořák and charismatic Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev?

Perth Concert Series: Scottish Chamber Orchestra - A Celebration Of Dvořák

Immerse offers a live orchestral concert and a unique learning experience for upper secondary school music pupils. It is designed to inspire creativity and enhance understanding of musical concepts used in the repertoire.

Immerse 2024

Music Hall

Eden Court Inverness

Mozart & Beethoven

St Michael's Parish Church

Paisley Abbey

The SCO is rightly renowned for its exceptional wind players, and four of them step out of the Orchestra as soloists in Mozart’s jolly, jaunty Sinfonia Concertante for oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn – with singing melodies that show off those instruments’ distinctive personalities.

Experience total immersion in Mozart, courtesy of soloists from the SCO and principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, who takes centre stage as solo pianist. The Scotsman describes Emelyanychev’s Mozart performances as ‘a near-miracle of balance and energy, sounds carefully layered […] to make Mozart’s harmonies glow vividly’.

SCO at Edinburgh International Festival: Maxim Emelyanychev & Principals of the SCO

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

This satirical fable about love and trust unfolds in 18th-century Naples, with a cast of unruly characters who interrogate the absurd logic of desire. A weekend’s worth of romantic entanglements and false identities ensue as the maverick Don Alfonso seeks to prove his unstable hypothesis that women cannot be trusted.

SCO at Edinburgh International Festival: Così fan tutte

Opéra-Comique’s new production of Georges Bizet's masterpiece is brought to the stage by conductor Louis Langrée and director Andreas Homoki. This is a classic tale of love, passion and jealousy, following the soldier Don José’s dramatic fall from grace as he meets the free-spirited Carmen.

SCO at Edinburgh International Festival: Carmen

Few composers convey youthful energy like Schubert and Mendelssohn, and in this concert we hear some of their sunniest works.

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

The Leven Centre Kinlochleven Community & Sports Centre

Volunteer Hall

Ryan Centre

SCO players and audiences always look forward to their concerts with their Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev – as lively as he is entertaining, he invariably brings fascinating insight into the music he directs.

Summer Classics

Callander Kirk

Join all the traditional Viennese festivities courtesy of classics from the Strauss family – from the thrilling rhythms of the Radetsky March to the flowing melodies of the Blue Danube – and operetta king Franz Lehár.

New Year Gala

Dumfries Campus - University of the West of Scotland (UWS)

Born in London to an English mother and a Sierra Leonean father, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a natural melodist and a musical pioneer, much admired for his lyrical gifts by Edward Elgar. His passionate Violin Concerto – long neglected, but now championed – is an ideal example of his captivating, rhapsodic music that touches the emotions and inspires the intellect.

Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto

Join Maxim Emelyanychev on his entertaining annual expedition to rediscover the sumptuous splendours of Baroque music – in the company of more recent composers who have been inspired by it.

Baroque Inspirations

Symphonic high spirits and choral splendours on a sumptuous scale – delivered by an exceptional quartet of dazzling singers, plus the massed ranks of the SCO Chorus, and passionate direction from Maxim Emelyanychev.

Mozart Gala

Among today’s leading authorities on Baroque music, British violinist Rachel Podger is also a superbly eloquent player, combining passion, elegance and richness in her perceptive performances, as both soloist and director.

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

With its fiery passions surging from icy evocations, Sibelius’ sole concerto is one of the most cherished works in the violin repertoire. SCO Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen has long been a committed and much-lauded Sibelian: he accompanies young, New Zealand-born Geneva Lewis – until recently a member of the prestigious BBC New Generation Artists project – in this intensely emotional masterpiece.

Sibelius Violin Concerto

Multi-award-winning trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov is one of today’s most brilliant musicians, but even he is put through his paces by the madcap virtuosity of Jörg Widmann’s thrilling whirlwind of a trumpet concerto, Ad Absurdum. The same composer plays affectionate games with Beethoven in his zany Con Brio, while American minimalist John Adams reimagines classic cartoon scores in his flamboyantly virtuosic Chamber Concerto.

Ad Absurdum

Have you ever felt grumpy? That is exactly how the poor Gaboon feels – really, REALLY grumpy! While the Gaboon’s friends: Long-legged Lin, Fluey-Lu, Woolly Wello and Hoppity Boppit, try everything to cheer Gaboon up, none of them realise that the musical mischief maker, Screature, is lurking in the shadows of the orchestra.

The Great Grumpy Gaboon

dundee

inverness

Surging tides and lapping waves, all heard from a seaside hotel in the dead of night: it was a stay in Broadstairs, Kent, that inspired the remarkable English composer Ruth Gipps to create her evocative Seascape in 1958 for an ensemble of ten wind players. Take a dip in the watery wonders of Gipps’s passionate music - and discover her Lake District-inspired pastoral idyll Cringlemire Garden played live in February.

GIPPS Seascape

The song-like Oboe Concerto was one of Mozart’s most loved and performed pieces during his own lifetime. Discover why in the hands of internationally recognised soloist Ivan Podyomov, Principal Oboe at Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and an internationally recognised concerto player too.

Mozart Oboe Concerto

Join outstanding British baritone Roderick Williams and conductor Andrew Manze as they explore Fauré’s poignant visions of paradise, joined by the fine voices of the SCO Chorus. Williams also embarks on the profound spiritual journey of Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs, while Ruth Gipps, a student of his, offers a pastoral idyll from the Lake District.

Fauré Requiem

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is a musical love letter, one of the tenderest, most lyrical creations for the instrument ever conceived, with heartbreaking melodies and a furiously fiery finale. Kuusisto contrasts Tchaikovsky’s poignant creation with young British composer Freya Waley-Cohen’s contemplation of nothing less than the workings of the universe, and Beethoven’s most compact and cheerful Symphony.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto

There’s entrancing melody courtesy of Schubert’s elegant early Sonatina and Fauré’s exquisite Cello Sonata, plus passion from Clara Schumann’s adventurous Romances, and bustling Parisian energy in Martinů’s rarely-heard sonata. Kuusisto brings the concert to an exuberant conclusion with music from Stravinsky’s Faustian parable of a soldier’s struggles with the Devil for his very soul – and his beloved violin.

An afternoon with Pekka & friends

The young Britten blended chamber and orchestral music in a portrait of his first love in Young Apollo, while Thomas Adès draws on English folk music in the fairytale dances he composed for Kuusisto. New York composer Timo Andres looks to outdo Beethoven in his flamboyant piano concerto The Blind Banister, and Sally Beamish salutes Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley in her dream-inspired Whitescape. To close, Kuusisto travels back to the 18th century, to the charm and elegance of one of Haydn’s wittiest symphonies.

Parabola

From chirruping birds and babbling brooks to a kaleidoscopic cosmic lightshow – the power of nature pulses through this electrifying concert directed by energetic British conductor Mark Wigglesworth

Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony

Matching vibrant, vivid performances with searching insights, Dutch-born Isabelle van Keulen is a global violin superstar. She joins the SCO as soloist and director for a concert focused around the exquisitely lyrical Violin Concerto by Robert Schumann – a delicate piece from the composer’s troubled final years, and until, recently rarely-performed.

Schumann & Schubert

Unfailingly charming and breathtakingly expressive, François Leleux delivers profound musical insights and high drama as both oboist and conductor. His matinee programme with the SCO is one of discoveries, written entirely by teenage composers.

Mozart & Strauss

Sir James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words considers the final utterances of Christ on the cross, from terror and despair to hope and transcendence, in music of raw emotion and shattering power. It brings together the immediacy of choral singing with the rich sounds of a string orchestra.

Seven Last Words

Our popular Re:Connect Tea Dance concerts return in 2024-25. Enjoy an afternoon of music and light refreshments and join our musicians as they introduce and perform a lively programme of personally selected pieces designed especially for people living with dementia.

Re:Connect Tea Dance Concerts

Leader of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe since 2008, Lorenza Borrani made a big impression directing Beethoven at her SCO debut last Season. She and SCO Principal Viola Max Mandel take to the spotlight in what many consider Mozart’s finest creation: the Sinfonia Concertante, K364. The composer no doubt had himself in mind for one of the piece’s solo parts, and the music’s elegant refinement conceals deep emotions of melancholy and joy.

Mozart Sinfonia Concertante

Admired for her peerless keyboard prowess as well as her profound musical insights, South Korean Yeol Eum Son has quickly taken a rightful place among the world’s most respected pianists. Following exquisite Mozart in 2022, she returns to the SCO with something far stormier and more dramatic: Beethoven’s powerful Third Piano Concerto.

Yeol Eum Son plays Beethoven

Scotland’s most esteemed violinist – the peerless Nicola Benedetti – joins charismatic Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev for an end-of-Season celebration full of romance and adventure.

Perth Concert Series: Scottish Chamber Orchestra - Benedetti Plays Brahms

Conceived on a grand scale, Brahms’ mighty Violin Concerto deals in profound emotions and surging drama, but it’s also a captivating dialogue between violin and orchestra – just the thing to showcase Benedetti and Emelyanychev’s illuminating musical partnership.

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

9 - 11 Jan, 2025

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

16 - 17 Jan, 2025

Sibelius Violin Concerto

30 - 31 Jan, 2025

Ad Absurdum

7 - 9 Feb, 2025

The Great Grumpy Gaboon

Feb 13, 2025

GIPPS Seascape

18 - 19 Dec, 2024

Silent Night

11 - 13 Dec, 2024

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Articles & News

Scottish Chamber Orchestra