EIF music reviews: Canvas of Sound with Tazeen Qayyum | BBC SSO: Bernstein & Stravinsky | Emily D’Angelo & Sophia Muñoz

BBC SSO: Bernstein & Stravinsky ★★★★

Usher Hall

Aged only 22, Messiaen’s three Offrantes oublies are steeped in the mystical convictions and deep human affection which defined his life. Strings shimmer, long lines climb to paradise and a near-silent bliss settles.

BBC SSO conductor Karina Canellakis | Chris Christodoulou

A jump then, to Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, commissioned by the city’s Bishop, who apparently added, somewhat coyly, that “a touch of West Side Story” would not go amiss. So, we hear crooning tonality – countertenor Hugh Cutting’s rock star Lord’s Prayer – along with choppy, clicking, brassy interruptions. The EIF chorus, as ever, sounded splendid, with four ringing interjections from the young voice stars.

Stravinsky’s Petrouschka began seeming a little subdued. My mistake: Canellakis and the fine BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (SSO) simply measured the drama to come. The music became hypnotic, weird and not a little frightening. Snide comments in the wind punctured the sheer string sound, brass brayed – what a superb section this is – and solos, from howling bassoon to pawky trumpet painted nail-on-blackboard portraits of our sad puppet and his adversaries. But nothing was overstated. So often Petrouschka is a played as a gaudy showpiece, the emotions delivered into our laps. Here, our own imaginations were alerted, drawn into a world of dark, introverted emotions where strange mechanical whirrings and sudden shrieks suggested dark dreams to come. So, a marvellous, disturbing performance from a starting musical partnership.

MARY MILLER

Canvas of Sound with Tazeen Qayyum ★★★★

The Hub

Making its concert hall debut, Canvas of Sound is a meditative multi-media collaboration between Pakistani-Canadian visual artist Tazeen Qayyum and Aga Khan Master Musicians Basel Rajoub and Feras Charestan. Inspired by the Festival’s theme of The Truth We Seek, Qayyum created a large-scale calligraphy collage of the Arabic words for hope, justice, peace and kindness, feeling the paper beneath her fingertips as Rajoub played scurrying arpeggios on duclar (a clarinet/duduk hybrid) and Charestan chimed in with the beatific sound of the zither-like qanun.

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Together their improvisations became more playful and pacey, like a medieval dance, while Qayyum responded with an ever expanding wreath of dense, spidery pen strokes, later projected as animated rotating rosettes on the cloth backdrop. Rajoub switched to soprano saxophone, soaring and spiraling over Charestan’s delicate plucking, then to alto sax for a mournful, melodic Middle Eastern jazz duet with the lithe patter of strings.

Finally, he took up a hand drum, livening and intensifying the dance. As the immersive interplay reached its climax, the delivery became looser, more free, and Qayyum more cavalier in her flourishes, layering more script on to her large square canvas until her pen eventually ran out.

FIONA SHEPHERD

Emily D’Angelo & Sophia Muñoz ★★★★

Queen’s Hall

For those audience members unfortunate enough not to have a note of the last-minute revised repertoire list for mezzo Emily D’Angelo’s recital with pianist Sophia Muñoz yesterday morning, it could all have been quite confusing. Changes in order and content resulted in a first half of music with a very similar feel.

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While D’Angelo has a natural ease and projection to her voice, the sequence of songs all became rather too laid back and underwhelming. Was My Heart’s in the Highlands a late nod to Scotland in the folk song selection? If so, it was in a fairly nondescript arrangement, unlike the promised Wild Mountain Thyme, which in its unaccompanied version held the Queen’s Hall in enthralled silence.

Much more interesting was what came after the interval. In two songs by Hugo Wolf, the dramatic power of D’Angelo’s stage presence shone through Der Feuerreiter, telling of the rider battling with fire. Likewise with the assured delivery of Alma Mahler’s beautiful Bei dir ist es Traut and Clara Schumann’s Lorelei, where the command of D’Angelo’s voice was most keenly heard, even though a bit of extra oomph from Muñoz at the piano wouldn’t have gone amiss.

CAROL MAIN

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