Review of Scottish Ensemble at Perth Concert Hall

Dec 13 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

IT was a tribute to the awesome playing of the Scottish Ensemble, and to the daring planning of their artistic director Jonathan Morton that Wednesday’s programme in Perth Concert Hall not only gave enjoyment as individual pieces, but that each piece reflected forwards and back, telling the listener more about music in sum.

Contemporary minimalism from the Baltic countries does not seem the natural bedfellow of Early English String Music, yet it worked. Thus the Shamen’s dance of Kutavicius’ Northern Gates from his Gates of Jerusalem, which unusually added chains and a big bass drum to the Ensemble’s usual line up, had a gesture which was recognizable in the Purcell Dance of the Furies which followed. Both pieces’ titles promised rather more in savagery than they delivered. Similarly the juddering fanfare like gesture from this Purcell piece turned up elsewhere.

Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, probably the best known piece of the evening, had a performance of astounding clarity and impact, for which some credit is due to the extraordinary clarity of Perth Concert Hall both in pitch and dynamic: the anchoring of the cellos and double-bass, the ethereal descending phrase of the violins and the softest touch on the bass drum, heard clearly and in scale.

The first of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s two pieces, Action, followed the meditative Pärt. It was a successful minimalist combination of a Bartokian running line and rhythmic chordal dance using time signatures and syncopation before whiffling away into silence. The gem of the evening was Byrd’s Fantasia a 6 No.2 in g minor, logically reduced to six the Ensemble played without vibrato to enhance the sound as of viols. Tüür’s second piece, Illusion, ended the half in a light-hearted rhythmic dance.

Purcell’s Fantasia upon One Note was a piece of archaic sound and sprung rhythms which preceded the longest work of the evening: Petris Vasks’ Distant Light. Jonathan Morton was the almost unbelievable soloist in this demanding piece. It started as it was to finish with slithering harmonics coming from nothing and finally going to nothing. Much of the piece was unique, only describable in far too many words, it was punctuated by three cadenzas of increasing difficulty for the soloist. The conviction of all players came over.

The three towers of candles were really only there because it was Christmas, but they and the effective lighting in the hall contributed to the atmosphere of the well attended and appreciated concert.

Ian Stuart-Hunter