Classical review: Red Note & Music Lab Ensembles, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow

THE printed programme told us virtually nothing about the music that made up an otherwise fascinating mix of compositions by Paris Conservatoire staff and students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Somehow, though, the combined forces of the professional Red Note Ensemble and RCS Music Lab student ensemble, under the scrupulously efficient baton of Garry Walker, overcame this flaw with performances that, regardless of relative composer experience, demonstrated an intriguing juxtaposition of styles, from the whiff of European conservatism at the heart of the French pieces, to refreshing aspects and of free thinking in those by RCS students Michael O’Sullivan and Jason Staddon.

Actually we could have done without Sullivan’s impenetrable programme note to his helter-skelter neo-Stravinskian Haste which, paradoxically, had immediate impact and charm and a sense of colour and structural perspective that effortlessly gripped you throughout.

Staddon’s Beautiful Ugly was certainly more explorative, opening out from a single pitch via microtonal inflexions, to an awkwardly-written trumpet solo that took some comfort from the gravitational resonances in the accompanying string quartet. Less polished, perhaps, but a sign of a promising voice.

The French pieces ranged from the vivid, often bombastic Etude en Alterance I of Frederic Durieux, fired by post-Messiaen clarity and energy, to the hypersensitive micro-gestures of Gerard Pesson’s Rescousse, the exquisite musical dissection of Emily Dickinson’s poems in Stefano Gervason’s Least Bee (Version II), and the final chaotic frenzy of Bruno Mantovani’s D’un rêve parti.

A spirited evening to mark a new formal alliance between both colleges.

Rating: ***