Cumnock Tryst reviews: Steven Osborne | The Music of Land Reclamation

Steven Osborne | Cumnock Tryst

Steven Osborne, Trinity Church, Cumnock ★★★★★

The Music of Land Reclamation, Barony Hall, Cumnock ★★★★

The Cumnock Tryst has been a glorious crusade for its founder and director Sir James MacMillan. His dual intention was always to bring A-listers from the musical world right to the doorstep of Cumnockians, using that celebrity stimulus to further inspire wider year-round community involvement to enhance the life and prospects of East Ayrshire’s post-industrial population. The opening two events in this tenth anniversary festival were a potent symbolisation of MacMillan’s award-winning success.

Wednesday’s opener featured Scots pianist Steven Osborne. In an untypical solo programme for him, a sort of pic’n’mix of musical trinkets moulded into a convivial free-flowing narrative, it was ultimately Osborne’s easeful delivery and infectious musicianship that captured the magic.

Schumann’s Kinderszenen expressed a dizzy distillation of naivety and musical guile. Bach’s Jesu Joy served as a bridge to the music box surreality of MacMillan’s own Lumen Christi, the vying sentiments of Prokofiev and Liadov, then Rachmaninov’s thick-set remix of Kreisler’s Liebesleid. A quirky coupling of James Clapperton’s Scottish Folk Songs and Judith Weir’s enchanting Chorale for Steve gave way to a closing trio of jazz numbers transcribed by Osborne. Keith Jarrett’s My Song and Bill Evans’s I Loves You Porgy were liquid gold before the dazzling dexterity of Oscar Peterson’s Indiana.

On Thursday, the spotlight shifted to the Advanced Higher Music pupils of the local Robert Burns Academy. Under Ayrshire composer Gillian Walker’s guidance, and with photographer (and BBC SSO clarinettist) Simon Butterworth’s searing aerial images of mining-scarred landscapes as creative inspiration, The Music of Land Reclamation - performed by professional trio - came strikingly together as a thought-provoking audio-visual sequence.

To see the pride on these pupils’ faces as they introduced their own works said everything about the power of achievement and the human value of MacMillan’s inspirational enterprise.

The Cumnock Tryst runs until 6 October