Classical review: Scottish Ensemble

Published on Monday 26 October 2009 17:57

SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE **** CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

IT'S the Scottish Ensemble's 40th birthday and for their current round of concerts, entitled Side by Side, they've invited students from St Mary's Music School and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to join them.

Michael Tippet's Concerto for Double String Orchestra was a perfect opener for the occasion. Its optimistic allegros were filled with sly hints of folk tunes and off-kilter jazz rhythms, while the central adagio proved that this enlarged ensemble was more than capable of earnest expressivity.

Corale is Berio's own arrangement for violin, two horns and strings of his Sequenza VIII. Clio Gould, familiar from her days as leader of the Scottish Ensemble, took to the helm as soloist in this phenomenally tricky work. She meant business, attacking the long repeated notes and sweeping up and down the fingerboard as though pre-programmed; and though the piece was really all about the remarkable solo line, the fleeting textures created by overlapping lines in the accompaniment were captivating in their own right.

For a masterclass in manipulating textures however, there was no need to look further than Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Though it seems to be a firm favourite with radio audiences, it was nice to be reminded of the power contained in a live performance, as the plaintive melody finally finds its way to a climax.

As birthday parties go, this was certainly a pleasurable one for the audience, and if the lively pace and whimsical merriment of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor was anything to go by, it seemed the musicians were having just as much fun.