Classical & Opera: The wind beneath their strings

SALLY Beamish’s third string quartet, Reed Stanzas, was premiered in July as part of this year’s BBC Proms lunchtime chamber series by its dedicatees, the Elias String Quartet. That’s a tremendous platform for any composer, right at the heart of the London establishment. But a series of follow-up performances currently taking place in scattered towns around Scotland are more likely to be where the work’s Celtic resonances will truly hit the mark.

For despite her English birth and upbringing, Beamish, now in her mid-fifties, has become one of Scotland’s most distinctive voices. Over 20 years of living and composing in rural Scotland – she works mainly in a hut at the foot of her Stirlingshire garden – has shaped a musical language as Scottish as the air she breathes.

In works like Reed Stanzas – or in a new clarsach concerto she is composing for Catriona Mckay – the Scottish influence is not, however, simply literal. That would be to label Beamish as parochial, which is to ignore the alluring complexity of inspiration and cross-fertilisation that defines her music and allows it to travel.

Sure enough, Reed Stanzas opens with a violin solo in the unmistakable manner of a traditional Scots air and ends with a toe-tapping reel, all of which stemmed from hearing the Elias Quartet’s Scots-born second violinist Donald Grant playing Scots fiddle. But that was just the starting point, as Beamish herself explains.

“I had heard Donald in a traditional gig in Manchester. Shortly afterwards I received an e-mail from him asking if I’d write a string quartet for the Elias Quartet. I hadn’t made the connection, so I got excited at the thought of writing a work for a quartet that had this traditional fiddler as one of its members.”

Aware that the Elias had just recorded all the Britten quartets, Beamish promptly got hold of them. Not only did it give her an insight into the ensemble’s personality, but she found herself transported back to her earlier career as a viola player, particularly at Aldeburgh and the surrounding Suffolk landscape that had so inspired Britten.

“I was reminded of the sounds of the reed beds and the birds, and I started thinking about reeds and their different connections to music – wind instruments like the accordion and the bagpipes.”

She considered, too, the various metaphors for reeds: the Christian idea of Mary as the “reed of God”, a channel through which air can pass; and the Celtic image of “the accursed reed”, through which Christ was given vinegar to drink.

But what really struck a chord with Beamish were the many Middle Eastern references, including the idea of “the reed flute cut from its reed bed, and so always singing a song of longing for the place of its birth”.

“All four members of the Elias Quartet are not living in the place of their birth. I don’t live in the place of my birth. So I wanted to convey a sense of all our roots calling us, which makes it quite a wistful and delicate piece.”

Grant’s roots are undeniably Scottish, which Beamish saw as a defining factor in making Reed Stanzas distinctive and different.

“The thing that’s different about the Elias Quartet is Donald,” she says. “I decided to base the whole piece around his skill as a traditional fiddler.

“The range of the Scottish fiddle is pretty well the second violin range. You don’t go very high; it’s about that richness of the middle register, and it’s a real skill to make it speak.”

The point is made clear in the opening bars, when Grant enters alone playing a Scots-inspired air. He joins the other three players on stage, who try to pull him in another direction with textures that are very different and very fragile – “like wind going through the reeds,” Beamish says.

“In the rehearsals, I had to keep reminding Donald to stay in traditional fiddle mode, because he kept getting drawn into the quartet. I wanted him to keep the contrast – the plaintive sound of the Scottish fiddle – going throughout the piece.”

But there’s a subtler dimension to this work, stemming from the sea landscapes around Harris which have long held an attraction for Beamish.

“I had an e-mail from the Proms asking for a programme note. I hadn’t actually started the piece, and I wrote a note saying, ‘This quartet was written on the island of Harris,’ thinking I’d go up there and complete it. As the deadline drew nearer I realised I just had to get myself up there. It was fantastic, in the middle of nowhere with the sounds of birds coming into my head the whole time. I was just putting them straight onto the page. This piece is full of birds.”

It’s Beamish’s visceral response to nature and the landscape around her that lurks at the heart of the Scottishness in this work; more so, perhaps, than the obvious idiomatic references that hover around the surface.

The same is likely to be true of Seavaigers, the clarsach concerto for Catriona McKay, which is almost complete and will also feature Shetland fiddler Chris Stout and the Scottish Ensemble when it is premiered at Celtic Connections on 22 January in Glasgow’s Fruitmarket, and in a further performance at Edinburgh’s International Harp Festival in April.

“It’s all about the sea between Dundee, where Catriona comes from, and Shetland, where Chris is from,” Beamish says. “It will call on them to improvise in the style they know best. But it’s also about the rawness of the sea and the way it conjures up a sense of fear and beauty.”

Prepare to be blown away.

• The Elias Quartet perform Sally Beamish’s Reed Stanzas in Dundee tomorrow ; Kelso, 4 November; Alnwick, 5 November; Aberdeen, 7 November; Kircaldy, 9 November; Milngavie, 11 November; Fort William, 12 November. For more information visit www.sallybeamish.com