Music
Scottish Ensemble
Wellington Church, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
five stars
THE FLICKERING light of the church candles augmented by the glow of their foot-switch operated tablet computer music stands, and the shimmering bling of guest guitarist Sean Shibe’s Christmas shirt, Jonathan Morton’s Scottish Ensemble are on their annual pilgrimage to reinvent the seasonal concert.
The 15 instrumentalists are playing some music composed for the season, but rather more appropriated for this programme. A first half of baroque works included a Vivaldi Concerto for Lute with Shibe, Bach played by a string quartet (plus bassist Diane Clark for the closing bars) with the rest of the instrumentalists becoming a ten-voice chorale, and a five-movement Christmas Concerto by Arcangelo Corelli that confirms the case put forward by Robert Philip in his recently-published The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music that orchestration begins with the Italian violinist’s Opus 6 Concerti Grossi.
After the interval, a carefully-constructed journey through music of the 20th century – and later – included Shibe’s second appearance with the ensemble, for Malcolm Arnold’s Serenade for Guitar and Strings. The filmic Pastoral/Action Sequence/Pastoral structure of that piece not only echoed the tempo shifts in the early music, but also appropriately followed the newer work, Sally Beamish’s Under the Wing of the Rock, with Jane Atkins the viola soloist in what is a picturesque pocket concerto. That its Celtic strains have not been deployed on recent films and TV programmes about Scottish royals and clan history is a remarkable oversight.
Atkins had been introduced to her solo role with the third movement Intermezzo from Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, and the whole second half was bracketed by the first and final movements of the work that gave the whole evening its title, Musica Adventus. There is little especially Yule about Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’s arrangement for string orchestra of his String Quartet No. 3, but his contemporary atmospherics had a great deal to say about the special atmosphere of this concert.
Touring to St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, Thursday December 6; Inverness Cathedral December 7; St John’s Kirk, Perth December 8; and Crichton Church, Dumfries December 9.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here