Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Suckling

Scottish Ensemble, Catriona McKay and Chris Stout in a programme mixing the classical and the Celtic; the composed and the improvised; the individually crafted and the collaboratively collaged.

The Scottish Ensemble playfully challenged the audience to decide game-show style, which country’s string music won the night: Germany or Britain? Indeed, the concert was a game of two halves with Britain being represented by William Walton and Martin Suckling in the first and Germany by Leopold Hurt and Brahms in the second.

The Scottish Ensemble’s tagline, “re-defining the string orchestra” could, in this particular programme, have justified the additional claim “re-defining the quartet”. The only work in this imaginatively conceived, four-item programme not written for quartet (or double quartet) was the opening Musical Postcard no. 4 by the young British composer Martin Suckling.

This second of two SCO Britten centenary concerts saw its subject juxtaposed with two living British composers and Mozart. Cynics might consider the closing Symphony no. 40 in G minor (1788) a reward for surviving the rest of the programme’s modernity.

A very striking wild-eyed hirsute man has been staring out at us across Scotland on posters for this concert tour, showing that the Scottish Ensemble has adapted well to the modern world of promotion, using titles, straplines and imagination. On the face of things, the choice of eight seemingly very disconnected pieces in the programme, from 1700 to the present day, was disconcerting.

Every December, the Scottish Ensemble takes a candlelit concert around Scotland. The music is not usually Christmassy, yet often suits the more contemplative season of Advent and comes as a complementary alternative to the many festive musical performances on offer and a relief from carols on loop in the shops.

The Scottish Ensemble has been resident in Dundee for four days, really getting under the skin of the city. Amongst a whole raft of activities, including pop-up concerts, performing a film score live at a screening at Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Ensemble has been working with string players from Dundee Schools Orchestra and Dundee Symphony Orchestra.

Reading Gérard Grisey’s programme notes on his masterpiece Vortex Temporum is not the most agreeable experience. The reader is informed that the work is structured around ‘three basic forms’: ‘the original event – a sinusoidal wave – and two continuous events, an attack with or without resonance as well as a sound held with or without crescendo’.