Scottish Ensemble

9 Feb 2005 in Highland, Music

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, Monday 7 February 2005

Scottish Ensemble

CLIO GOULD will step down as leader of the Scottish Ensemble this summer after 12 years in which she has been instrumental in building the group into a string orchestra of genuine distinction. This BAA Scotland High Flyer concert is their penultimate tour this season, but Clio will not be playing in the last of them (Anthony Marwood is the guest leader).

Her place as leader will be filled from within both the Ensemble and the family, since her husband, Jonathan Morton, has been appointed to that position (the couple are expecting their first child soon). They shared the two roles for solo violin in the closing piece in this concert, Michael Tippett’s ‘Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli’. It was a triumphant finale for Clio – despite a broken string in the closing bars – and another powerful reminder of just how good this group has become under her direction.

2005 is the centenary of Tippett’s birth, and the Ensemble opened with a typically alert and expressive account of the ‘Little Music for Strings’, followed by Corelli’s ‘Concerto Grosso in F’. The latter was the source of the ‘Fantasia’, which provided a ravishing conclusion from the Ensemble, expanded by the addition of a number of students from the RSAMD who had taken part in a project in Glasgow.

The students were also involved in the second of two pieces featuring Benjamin Grosvenor. The BAA Scotland High Flyer series is designed to pair the ensemble with fast-rising young soloists, but not many of the likely candidates are quite as youthful as this. The pianist is only 12, and was one of the contenders in the final of last year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year at the Usher Hall.

“Benjamin may have stolen the show in what is Clio Gould’s swan song as leader, but I suspect she won’t have minded that”

Scotland’s Nicola Benedetti (an earlier soloist in this series with the Ensemble) won the final on the night, but Grosvenor earned enormous critical praise and took top place in an online audience vote run by the BBC. Doubtless the cuteness factor of a wee boy tackling a big piano played a part in that, but his musical performance fully merited the accolades.

Naturally, then, expectations were high when he took the stage for the first of the two works he performed with the Ensemble, Mozart’s ‘Piano Concerto No 13 in C’. It took only moments to get over the novelty of seeing someone so young performing on a major stage with a professional group – his playing quickly banished all distractions.

He showed no signs of nerves even when bassist Diane Clark momentarily delayed the start when she realised that the music she had before her was not the piece they were about to perform. He played from memory and with complete assurance, not only in terms of technical execution of Mozart’s trickier passages, but also with a maturity of conception that belied his age.

Benjamin Britten’s ‘Young Apollo’ with the augmented Ensemble allowed the pianist to demonstrate that his grasp of 20th century music was equally acute. Again playing from memory (he had not played either work before preparing for this tour), he interacted with the group like a seasoned professional, and sailed through both technical and interpretative difficulties with sublime poise and conviction.

Young Benjamin may have stolen the show in what is Clio Gould’s swan song as leader, but I suspect she won’t have minded that. Nor will she be lost to the Ensemble entirely – she has been appointed Conductor Emeritus, and will continue to take part in occasional projects. Jonathan Morton takes over as leader in the summer.