OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 13 December 2008

LED BY Artistic Director Jonathan Morton, the Scottish Ensemble’s latest performance offered a refreshing take on a yuletide seasonal concert. Featuring John Adams Shaker Loops, a newly commissioned work Green by Thea Musgrave, Clapping Music by Steve Reich and Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, the annual candlelit concert delighted the audience and offered welcome respite from the usual musical fare of the season.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of spending an evening with the Scottish Ensemble is their ability to surprise the audience and introduce new works to the repertoire. Green, a work for twelve strings by Thea Musgrave, celebrates the 80th birthday of the Edinburgh-born composer.

Concieved as a continuous span, the thirteen minute work features a clash of musical forces led by the first violin and double bass. The idea of conflict is explored by the work beginning with a melodic “arioso” interrupted by the aggressive discord of solo double bass.

Green is a more subtle and moderate piece than its theme might first suggest – with a series of reactionary responses from the strings that continue to unfold, rather than simply being a violent clash of one musical voice against another. Emotionally it is an interesting work, fragmentary by nature and passionately restrained.

Influenced by contact with Ghanaian drummers that American composer Steve Reich met in West Africa in the 1960’s, Clapping Music strips sound back to the bare rhythm of human hands. Deceptively simple the two-part basic rhythm gradually shifts, moving back a quaver every 8 or 12 bars.

The intersections between the two groups of musicians are part of the life and fabric of the music. Counting and concentration are crucial in this work, and also a little self conscious in a concert performance. Reich’s Clapping Music seemed to lose something in the translation, and be more of a clever musical exercise than an essential communicative or expressive act.

The opening piece, John Adams’ Shaker Loops, embraced both minimalism and emotional range. From the very first phrase trembling with energy, this is a work alive with richly layered pure vibrations of sound. Dancing rhythm and the cinematic scope of the work are part of what enables this music to expand, in the same way that Copland’s Appalachian Spring conjures the vast American landscape of our collective imaginations.

Composed as ballet music for Martha Graham in 1944, Appalachian Spring evokes all the pioneering energy and spiritual hope of the New World. Excellent performances from Anna Jones (flute), Tim Orpen (clarinet) and Ursula Leveaux (bassoon), together with the characteristic exuberance of the Ensemble, brought this piece to life. It was a familiar work to end the evening and one which in the strains of the Shaker hymn ‘Simple Gifts’ (familiar here as ‘Lord of the Dance’) perhaps best conveyed the Green heart of seasonal renewal, rejuvenation and hope.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

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• Scottish Ensemble