At one level the new touring programme by the Hebrides Ensemble, a unique collaboration with Ecat, the Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust, which opened in Glasgow on Monday, went to Inverness last night, travels to Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall tonight, then on to Perth Concert Hall on Friday, is among the most complex devised by the group in its 21-year history.
It would have been challenging enough if Will Conway, artistic director of the Hebrides, had organised a stand-alone performance of Harrison Birtwistle’s Pulse Shadows, an enormous work for soprano, string quartet and mixed ensemble. But Conway went further. With the blessing of Birtwistle, Conway conjured a concept programme that interleaved the multiple movements of Pulse Shadows with a series of Fantasias by Henry Purcell, performed by a string quartet playing in the style of the period of the 17th century.
Thus the stage was set for a conglomeration of compositional and performance styles as the music of different centuries, performance styles and objectives, collided.
But you know what? It was all about common ground. For all the activity in the Birtwistle and the modernism of its language; for all the spectacular singing of American soprano Claron McFadden and the fiercely concentrated playing of the brilliant Hebrides musicians; and for all the intensity of Purcell’s music, I realised by half time that I was actually listening to one integrated thing: a pluralistic meditation at the core of which, despite moments of mercurial activity, lay a centre of stillness and contemplation.
HHHH
