Music review: Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Gordon Bragg, Jonny Greenwood’s Water, online

The SCO’s video performance of Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s icily beautiful Water is compelling, writes David Kettle

Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Gordon Bragg, Jonny Greenwood’s Water, Online ****

We’ve come a long way from the hastily thrown-together online performances of the early pandemic months, and a long way in musical style, too, from Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet, which launched the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s four-concert digital season back in January. The quartet of video performances have been stylishly delivered and vividly played. More importantly, though, they’ve allowed up-close, intimate contact with some compelling music: they might not offer the immediacy or even unpredictability of live performance, but they make up for it with rich, detailed sound and illuminating images.

Both of which contribute greatly to this icily beautiful final offering of the current series. Jonny Greenwood might be best known as one of Radiohead’s guitarists, but he’s increasingly prominent as a composer of ‘classical’ works and film scores. He wrote his 2014 Water for the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which has issued a live CD recording, though the SCO’s video performance is arguably richer, clearer and probably stranger too.

The standing SCO musicians resemble nothing more than some kind of ritual gathering

There’s an unsettling beauty to Greenwood’s gently rippling textures across his one-to-a-part string orchestra, and the standing SCO musicians resemble nothing more than some kind of ritual gathering in director Mauro Silva’s shadowy ensemble shots, all hanging on conductor Gordon Bragg’s calm, considered direction.

If it all sounds a bit moody and soft-focus (and for such gently luminous music, it feels a bit dark), violinists Colin Scobie and Kana Kawashima provide far more demonstrative, harder-edged playing in fiercely dissonant intertwining lines near the end. Silva’s detailed camerawork gets us up close, too, to the gentle tanpura strummings from Bharati Bundhoo and Hardeep Deerhe, and even to the fingers of Simon Smith on his keyboard. It’s like being among the musicians themselves, a particularly beguiling effect amid Greenwood’s unhurriedly unfolding, darkly magical score. Water stays online on the SCO’s YouTube channel until 6 May: it’ll deeply reward 20 minutes of anyone’s time.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​