Classical review: Illuminati Wind Quartet

Published on Tuesday 9 June 2009 19:04

ILLUMINATI WIND QUARTET ** RSAMD, GLASGOW

THREE world premieres of works by Scottish composers, commissioned and performed by a quartet of recent RSAMD graduates, promised dynamism and innovation. Yet even before the performance had begun, a certain disappointing similarity between the works was apparent.

Each title and explanatory note proffered an overtly programmatic guide to the music which was later read aloud as if to emphasise the importance of the background stories. When the music was eventually forced to speak for itself, there was no disguising the unfortunate parallels between the three pieces.

True, Rory Boyle's A Box of Chatter was filled with light-hearted musical jokes that had no place in Gareth Williams's openly simplistic How and Oliver Searle's more meaningfully nostalgic Snowbirds. Nevertheless, all three employed the same tired compositional formulae to produce a programme that was far more consistent and familiar than it ever should have been.

Sadly it was beyond the powers of the Illuminati Wind Quartet to enliven this bland yet essentially palatable music.

Fresh from a stint aboard a cruise ship, the group were eager to embrace the lunchtime recital's informality between the pieces, but they remained irreparably tense and introverted while actually performing, undoubtedly feeling the pressures of having to play outside their comfort zone.

In the end it was difficult to say whether the shortcomings of the musicians had negatively affected the music, or vice versa. Either way, more could have been made of such an opportunity and more should have been delivered.