OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 7 April 2011

LEAD BY Guest Director Anthony Marwood, the Scottish Ensemble gave their final concert series performance of the current season with a selection of beautifully contrasting works by Mendelssohn, Morton Gould and Schumann, showcasing the timing, poise and vivacity of both soloist and ensemble.

Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 13 in C Minor, “Symphoniesatz”, opened the programme, demonstrating the composer’s command of earlier musical forms in its accomplished use of Baroque rhythms and fugal writing, astonishingly written when the composer was just 14 years old. Building in texture and vibrancy, this piece provided an excellent introduction to the evening.

Anthony Marwood (photo Sussie Ahlberg)

Morton Gould’s 1995 Pulitzer Prize Winning Stringmusic, a fascinating and densely textural work in five sections, was thoroughly engrossing, whetting the appetite for future performances of his work. The variety of sounds and stylistic variation in this piece, ranging from lyrical melody to soundscape elements, provided a great counterfoil to the relative familiarity of musical form in the opening work by Mendelssohn.

Gould’s opening ‘Prelude’, introduced by melancholic cellos and viola, for example, is gentle, reflective and filmic as it unfolds, then defies expectation with the discordant unease of high register strings. Throughout the work expectation twists and turns, one musical element subverting another in wonderfully subtle ways.

In the second section, ‘Tango’, dance rhythms feel cast out of their element, lumbering gait and balletic elegance combined with a delightfully comic ending, delivered in the one movement. An elaborate summation of influences, the variety of bowing in the third section, ‘Dirge’, is particularly interesting. Here strings are scraped, tapped and bounced over, creating an ebb and flow of sound both atmospheric and musical.

The contrasting volume and density of sound harnessed by the entire ensemble during the third section, which feels almost symphonic in its scope, culminates brilliantly in a fragile blend of audible sound dragged backwards through the air before disappearing altogether.

Within each movement sound is juxtaposed in unexpected ways, yet there is still a sense of structural comfort; in the 4th section, ‘Ballad’, for example, Gould gently returns the audience to the familiarity of Romanticism, conveyed in his rich and melodious string arrangement, then concludes the work with a flourish of drama, urgency and delicate beauty in the final movement, ‘Strum’.

Anthony Marwood’s wonderfully articulate performance of Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, arranged for violin and string orchestra by Orlando Jopling, was another highlight of the evening, conveying the emotional intensity and inherent Romanticism of the work.

The intimacy of Schumann’s writing for voice and piano and his understanding of the integral relationship between solo voice (human or instrumental) and accompaniment can equally be felt in the orchestration of this concerto. Dialogue between solo violin and string orchestra is peppered with intricacy, with the instrumentation not just providing echoes of the solo voice but essential to the musical texture and clarity of expression within the whole work.

Performed as three continuous movements, the span of the piece opening with a lyrical central thematic statement by the solo violin progressively expands during the sweeping exposition, combining the full symphonic volume of the ensemble with a more delicate sensibility explored in the intimate grouping of instruments, such as solo violin underpinned by viola and cello. There is audible recognition that the breadth of Schumann’s writing, both chamber and symphonic, is brought to bear in this late and historically neglected work. Schumann’s Cello Concerto arranged for violin was gloriously showcased by soloist and ensemble in this latest performance, part of a series of UK premieres of Jopling’s arrangement for the current tour.

The Scottish Ensemble programme for 2011/2012 has just been launched and the new season will begin in June 2011, touring Highlands and Islands venues on the Isle of Skye, Boat of Garten and Ballachulish with a selection of works by Mozart, Woolrich, Wolf and Schubert. The group will then return to Eden Court, Inverness, in the autumn for the continuing season, touring throughout Scotland and the UK.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

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