The Sanctuary, Queen’s Cross Church, Aberdeen, 23 February 2004

THE HANDSOME interior and pleasing acoustic of The Sanctuary provided a fine setting for the premiere of Stuart MacRae’s Hamartia (performances follow tonight, 24 February, at the Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, and St John’s Kirk, Perth, on Wednesday 25 February). The new work was commissioned by the Scottish Ensemble for the group and cello soloist Li-Wei, and they made an impressive job of it.

MacRae spoke beforehand about the importance of juxtapositions within the music, and that was readily apparent right from the opening bars of the piece. The high, spectral harmonies of the opening string writing were initially echoed but also contrasted in the lyrical riposte on cello, and the music fell into an absorbing pattern of sharply etched and subtlety constructed contrasts.

MacRae employs an uncompromisingly modernist musical vocabulary in his work, but his writing for the cellist revealed a fine ear for richly contoured melody in an almost traditional basking in the lyrical warmth associated with the instrument. He employed contrasting registers – notably very high strings in the ensemble against richer depths in the cello – in very effective fashion. The music was in constant flux, moving from small, tightly held oscillations between close intervals to dramatic swooping falls, from almost static rhythmic movement to declamatory outbursts, and from passages of intense but pent-up energy to sudden explosive releases of that energy.

It ended with a gentle and reflective falling away that demanded quiet contemplation during the interval, but the effect of that ending was somewhat compromised by Li-Wei’s decision to play an encore of a bravura transcription by Paganini with the ensemble straight afterwards, and just before the interval.

The virtuoso variations on music by Rossini were an impressive assertion of his qualities as a player, but disrupted the mood of MacRae’s piece in damaging fashion, and might have been played with greater profit after the break (I initially though of the end of the concert as more appropriate, but it wouldn’t really have worked then, either, and for similar reasons relative to Kenneth Leighton’s Homage to Percy Grainger.)

Leighton’s substantial Octet held up a mirror to the opening music in the programme, a selection of Percy Grainger’s setting of Folk Songs. They included ‘Irish Tune from County Derry’, better known to posterity as ’Danny Boy’ (or ‘The Londonderry Air’). The problem with it is while it’s a lovely tune, it is impossible now to hear it without the cloying encrustation of sentimentality it has accrued over the years (and Grainger didn’t hold back on the sentiment, either). The vibrant ‘Molly on the Shore’ was much more successful, as were the English setting, ’Mock Morris’, and “The Immovable Do”.

The remainder of an attractive programme drew on the two most familiar works incldued this selection of English music of the 20th century, Elgar’s short but achingly beautiful Sospiri and the celebrated Fantasia on Greensleeves by Vaughan Williams, each of which included harp as well as the strings. All were immaculately played by this excellent ensemble, and made for a typically imaginative and attractive concert.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004