Concert review: Art Animotion

ART ANIMOTION ST GILES CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH ****

WHILE many artists are inspired by music, it's rare to witness how that creative spark gives rise to the finished art work. In this innovative art and music collaboration, Edinburgh-based Russian artist Maria Rud painted live on screen during three pieces in a beautifully conceived programme of vocal music performed by Medieval music group Canty. Rud's work is influenced by the Russian mysticism of expressionist painters such as Chagall and Soutine, and her enigmatic elongated figures, drawn with just a few brushstrokes, and burning red sun, were recurring symbols in these paintings.

Each painting had its own ongoing narrative and it was fascinating to see Rud build up images only to paint over them, then sculpt away the paint to reveal something else. This mirrored the way the vocal lines in these pieces, written for four singers, are intertwined and layered to produce different strands and colours of sound. The music mixed works stretching back across the centuries by Hildegard of Bingen and the 13th-century Incholm Antiphoner and the earliest surviving examples of Scottish polyphony, the St Andrews Music Book, alongside contemporary works commissioned by Canty. These included James MacMillan's moving Os mutorum, Michael McGlynn's evocative Lorica and the premiere of Stetit Puella from Ukrainian Oleh Harkavyy. The St Giles acoustics gathered every note to its rafters, giving the voices and Bill Taylor's ethereal contributions on medieval harps an angelic aura.