Classical review: Scottish Ensemble and RSAMD Strings

Published on Thursday 10 February 2011 19:23

SCOTTISH ENSEMBLE AND RSAMD STRINGS ONETOUCH THEATRE, EDEN COURT, INVERNESS ****

THE Scottish Ensemble's collaboration with a group of students from the RSAMD has become an annual staple of their programme, and has many benefits beyond the obvious one of opening up repertoire denied to the Ensemble's usual 12 strings, expanded to 13 here, and doubled by the students.

The full complement of musicians featured in both works in the second half of a very enjoyable programme of English music. They opened with Britten's Op. 29, an edgy Prelude and vigorous flowing Fugue for 18 Strings. The OneTouch acoustics do not do full justice to string sound, but the expanded forces augured well for what was to come.

The Variations on Sellenger's Round is, as Jonathan Morton admitted, something of an oddity, but a curiously effective one in its alternating fast-slow variations by diverse hands on an old Irish tune. Britten, Tippett and Walton were all contributors to this Aldeburgh Festival creation.

Joe Cutler's newly commissioned Equal Measured Music foundered initially when the electronic samples failed to work behind Jonathan Morton's electric violin, but with the gremlins sorted out, the Ensemble gave a compelling account of Cutler's tricky, rhythmically driven music.

The lush lyricism of Elgar's Serenade for Strings and the more knotty constructions of Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (an Edinburgh Festival commission from 1953) allowed the enlarged group to shine in contrasting works, with the later piece proving particularly absorbing.