Music review: Hebrides Ensemble

Published on Wednesday 12 November 2008 18:43

**** EDEN COURT THEATRE, INVERNESS

THE rather dry acoustic in Eden Court's new OneTouch Theatre is not ideal for unamplified chamber music, but the Hebrides Ensemble rode lightly over its disadvantages. The central core of their programme lay in three works for the unusual combination of string quartet and solo voice.

Martin Suckling's Aotromachd/Lightness, a setting of Meg Bateman's Gaelic poem commissioned for this tour, began in a fiercely driven dissonant flurry, but such complex outpourings alternated with simpler melodic passages and glistening high harmonics. Mezzo-soprano Jane Irwin sang the Gaelic lyric beautifully, followed by a section in which she spoke the English version, interspersed with the melody, gently hummed.

Respighi's Il Tramonte allowed her to display her best bel canto mode against a romantic string setting in an Italian translation of Shelley's melancholic poem The Sunset.

Best of all was Schoenberg's String Quartet No 2, a benchmark work. It received a gripping performance from players and singer alike, concentrated, intense and deeply felt.

These three works were interspersed with equally enjoyable and impressively executed music for smaller combinations. Catherine Marwood and William Conway performed Lutoslawski's Bucolics for viola and cello, violinists Alexander Janiczek and Zoe Beyers tackled a diverse selection from Berio's Duetti per due Violini, and Janiczek revelled in the extended techniques of George Benjamin's Three Inventions For Solo Violin.