Edinburgh International Festival review: Ars Nova Copenhagen

Published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 20:03

Ars Nova Copenhagen *** Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Yesterday morning's concert at the Queen's Hall must hold the record for the smallest Festival audience there, certainly this year and perhaps ever. The house was less than half full for choral ensemble Ars Nova, visiting from Copenhagen with director Paul Hillier. If there was anything to keep people away, it was more likely to be theinnocuousness of much of the music rather than an unfounded aversion to suspect modernity.

Not that Steve Reich's Know What Is Above You, which opened proceedings, fell into either category. For female vocal quartet, it ingeniously combines minimalist insistent rhythmic patterns with a sensitive lyricism, ably performed with clear voices and bang-on tuning by the Ars Nova group. Its succinct text was appreciatively short in comparison with that of David Lang's For Love Is Strong. Taking every metaphor and simile he could find in the biblical Song of Songs – and there are a lot of them – its sustained lines in the lower parts, with short bursts as if in commentary from above, was an intriguing idea in theory, but lacked definition. Ars Nova made a valiant effort to maintain initial momentum, but sagged towards the middle of what was an unnecessarily complex score.

More interesting were the Lullabies by New Zealander Jack Body, the men's voices coming to the fore in Paul Hillier's clearly detailed direction, and Lou Harrison's Mass for St Cecilia's Day, composed in atmospheric plain-chant style and accompanied exquisitely by Andrew Lawrence-King on small harp and psaltery.