Music review: Dunedin Consort/Nicholas Mulroy, Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh


Dunedin Consort/Nicholas Mulroy, Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh *****
Victoria’s 1603 Requiem provided the concert’s framework, segued smoothly into from the Requiem aeternam plainsong as the singers processed into Canongate Kirk, and its movements interspersed among the concert’s more modern works. Among those, James MacMillan’s aching A Child’s Prayer, written as a memorial to the victims of the Dunblane school shooting, was immensely powerful in its angry defiance, and things reached a furious climax in the angular, dissonant O Saviour of the World by Roderick Williams (another star singer). Respite came from Cecilia McDowell’s piquant, perfumed Standing as I do before God, though Judith Bingham’s war-themed Watch with me was perhaps less convincing in its broad-ranging storytelling. Nonetheless, it was an exceptional evening of music, deeply thoughtful, compassionate and nourishing.
DAVID KETTLE