Classical review: Daniel’s Beard, Glasgow Cottiers

Interesting, innovative and surprising: three words that sum up the flavour of programmes in the Cottier Chamber Project, a daily feature of this year’s West End Festival.

Last night’s early evening concert by the host ensemble, Daniel’s Beard, was no exception.

With music by late Romantic Austrian, Franz Schreker, recently graduated Glasgow University student Christopher Hutchings, and an untypical early work by Vaughan Williams, the common focus was a distinctive quintet instrumentation of violin, cello, clarinet, horn and piano, and a sequence of works that flowed effortlessly into each other.

Schreker’s Der Wind set an impressionistic mood, its delicate shimmering opening unintentionally enhanced by the dancing reflections on the floor of clarinettist Jean Johnson’s sequinned outfit.

The series’ artistic director, horn player Andy Saunders, explained the history of Hutchings’ Acteon and Diana, a work originally written for the festival’s composition competition a couple of years ago, rewritten by Hutchings when he failed to win, and premiered last year in its revised format. As a narrative on the fatal hunting escapade of its two mythical protagonists, it is idiomatically scored and clearly argued, if still in need of tightening up.

What a surprise Vaughan Williams’ student Quintet in D turned out to be: unmistakably Brahmsian, but speckled with premonitions of his later modal, folksy characteristics.

Rating: ****