THE joy of Savourna Stevenson's music, I have always found, is that it is direct music, from the heart and to the heart, absolutely open and totally honest in its integrity and expressive qualities.

And so it is in her new Concerto for Pedal Harp, played on Sunday night by star harpist Catrin Finch with the slightly reduced strings of the Scottish Ensemble, led by Jonathan Morton, in accompaniment.

Truth be told, it wasn't a piece that sat comfortably in the bone-dry acoustic of Cottier's Theatre. The Concerto, full of whole-tone and pentatonic-y implications, and lovingly played by Finch with expressive delicacy and an alluring sense of elan, is actually a voluptuously Romantic piece, unashamedly gorgeous in its first movement, with more than a hint of the tango, a wonderfully touching sense of yearning, perhaps melancholy, in its second, and a darker, striking flavour of Bernard Herrmann in the harmonies and mood of its finale. The music would have perhaps appreciated a warmer, more spacious acoustic than Cottiers can provide, and a more sultry atmosphere than Glasgow could offer on Sunday night.

Then it was party-piece time with the Scottish Ensemble in a sizzling performance of Ravel's String Quartet, as arranged for the group by the legendary Rudolf Barshai, with thumpingly incisive pizzicato sections, great warmth, electrifyingly edgy rhythms, superb characterisation in the finale and a confidence in the Scottish Ensemble's own delivery which seemed to transcend any acoustic limitations. And I couldn't help but notice that the group didn't call the Ravel by the makeshift title of Petite Symphonie: a good move, methinks.

HHHH