Music review: Ensemble Marsyas

Edinburgh International Festival: When Edinburgh's St Cecilia's Hall opened its doors for the first time in 1763, its patrons '“ the fashionable Edinburgh Musical Society '“ would have been treated to the latest hits of the day: music by the likes of Handel, Gluck, Arne and one Francesco Barsanti, born in Lucca, but enticed to ­Edinburgh as a paid ­employee of the Society.

St Cecilia’s Hall

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Each of these featured in Tuesday’s absorbing recreation of a typical 18th-century Society programme by the charismatic Ensemble ­Marsyas, under its director and harpsichordist Peter Whelan, the first concert in an early evening festival series celebrating the tasteful restoration and reopening of Scotland’s oldest concert hall.

There is much to ­celebrate, not least the super-intimacy of the hall’s naturally scorching acoustics. In the two Barsanti Op 3 Concerti Grossi that bookended the concert, Whelan’s nine-strong period instrument team unleashed the music’s ear-catching originality, notably Barsanti’s dazzling writing for natural horn and timpani.

They were joined by mezzo-­soprano Emilie Renard in arias by Gluck, Arne and Handel, her performances personable, eloquent and moving. She made a fleeting appearance, too, in Barsanti’s fluid harmonisations of old Scots songs, enriched by Colin Scobie’s refreshingly authentic fiddle playing.