Scottish Ensemble with Toby Spence

Feb 9 2010 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

THE Scottish Ensemble were very well served by the staff of Perth Concert Hall. They had fashioned an intimate, cabaret-like atmosphere: gone was the usual raked seating, replaced by a flat floor with individual chairs around small tables each with a candle.

The concert opened with the only disappointment: Satie’s Gnossienne No 1. Andy Massey as solo pianist played it against its character: a bit portentous, with too many pauses destroying its rhythm and hypnotic atmosphere.

Next came Jonathan Morton’s own arrangement of pieces from Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite. The Ensemble was a delight in the sharply delicate Serenade for the Doll as was Jonathan Morton’s tone for the plaintive The Little Shepherd. With a player as excellent as Diane Clark what else can you do than ask her to be the elephant in Jimbo’s Lullaby? The lullaby itself was strikingly harmonized by divisi strings. The Golliwog’s Cakewalk was perhaps a little sophisticated, but the Tristan quotes were aptly Wagnerian and deliciously mocked.

In the Gnossienne No 3 which followed Andy Massey had re-discovered his sense of style and played more flowingly and to much better effect. Ian Watson, playing to inimitable effect a European style accordion and adding to the cabaret atmosphere, joined the Ensemble for Kurt Schwertsik’s Adieu Satie.

This approachable and enjoyable Suite, again arranged by Jonathan Morton, began with Parade, the accordion giving a characteristically French flavour to this perky boulvardier style march.

Next was Darius en vacances, presumably to Spain, due to the habañera rhythm. Then Le coq et l’Arlequin: this was an off-kilter valse, hectic with a few touches of Shostakovich-like catastrophe, ending with a final song from the accordion. Gymnopédie, quoting from Satie, began with slow groans from the accordion and sighs from the strings and had the hollow, mournful sound nostalgic for things lost. The final Clownerie acrobatique began with an ostinato and went on like a chase from a silent film.

The entire second half was given over to an increasingly spell-binding account of nine Jacques Brel songs in which Toby Spence unforgettably partnered the Scottish Ensemble, now enlarged with accordion, piano and percussion, Iain Sandilands. As he announced, this was for the first time ever. He began with J’arrive and was a little histrionic before settling. Amsterdam began in a Sprechgesang way before moving to the more lyrical. Fernand was superbly macabre with the Scottish Ensemble revealing itself as a backing group de luxe. Jef showed some mawkishness, perhaps revealing Toby Spence’s choice of an encore other than Ne Me Quitte Pas.

Vesoul was a brilliant tongue-twister with the Scottish Ensemble in Big Band mode and exciting playing from Ian Watson. Au Suivant had magnificent power and Les bourgeois had the young firebrands turning old and conventional by adopting a clipped English French accent. La Valse à mille temps provided a vertiginous climax with La Chanson des Vieux Amants as an encore. In these chansons Toby Spence had brilliantly traversed from delirious joy to deep sadness.

Ian Stuart-Hunter