Following a touring schedule that puts many of its rivals to shame, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has briefly split itself in two, with its string and wind groups undertaking parallel concerts in separate venues. The String Ensemble's programme, directed from the leader's chair by Austrian violinist Alexander Janiczek, is a hard-hitting, audacious look at interwar modernism. The calm optimism of Stravinsky's 1927 ballet Apollon Musagète is balanced by the sombre musings of Bartok's Divertimento and Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre, both written in 1939 in response to fascism and impending war.
The title of Bartok's work suggests "diversion". Throughout there is a sense of an attempt to ward off an inevitable catastrophe, as rhythms dislocate and harmonies curdle. Salzburg-born Janiczek located it squarely - if unusually - in the same Austro-Hungarian ferment that produced Mahler and Schoenberg rather than aiming for rampant Hungarian nationalism. The SCO string sound, clear yet rich, occasionally blunted the impact; Bartok needs a fraction more astringency.
Hartmann remained in Germany during the Third Reich, composing in secret while the Nazis were in power. His Concerto Funèbre, peering at Mahler, Berg and Bach in turn, is a raging lament for a culture fatally undermined. It was here that the plangency of the SCO sound came into its own, while Janiczek proved an ideal soloist, at times filing his tone down in bleached anguish, elsewhere hovering over the seething strings with a lacerating sweetness.
The performance of Apollon Musagète, however, was little short of spellbinding. It's a tricky piece, a neoclassical reflection on the abiding power of music and dance, structured after a sequence of divertissements from imperial Russian ballet. It can easily sprawl, but here the disparate elements were held in perfect balance. I've always felt that the score palled without Balanchine's choreography; the SCO proved me wrong.
· Further performance at the Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline (01383 314000), tonight.
