Nine members of the London Sinfonietta spent around 70 minutes lending a hand at Kings Place’s ‘Scotland Unwrapped’ season. Works by Dame Judith Weir, Sir James MacMillan and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies formed the substance of a programme that was less about Scotland and Scottishness per se in favour of a brief exploration of heightened emotions in the creativity of composers with Scottish affinities, familial or otherwise. That exploration produced highly-charged performances, producing music that spoke directly to the heart. I have reviewed other sessions of unwrapping; this was the first that was engaging from start to finish.
Weir’s Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album remembers James Reid, a piper in the Jacobite army, executed by the English who thought his instrument was a weapon of war. The three pieces that make up the work eschews that kind of magical thinking and opts for a sound-world that aims to capture the soul of the bagpipes through the combined voices of a soprano saxophone (Simon Haram), E flat clarinet and basset clarinet (both played by Mark van de Wiel). As well as being a lament for Reid, the elegant and soulful performance was also an act of comradeship amongst an extended family of pipes and pipers.
Proof that the English are not all bad came with MacMillan’s setting of the great 17th-century poet George Herbert. Love Bade me Welcome, receiving its first performance, is scored for soprano, two violins and two cellos; it is a mystical evocation of Love’s constancy and benevolence, belief in which guarantees repose. The composer uses the darker colours afforded by the two cellos to create moods that move from the contemplative to the ecstatic, and to the transcendent. Soprano Jennifer France’s tone moved in harmony with those moods, with very fine phrasing and enunciation. In places her timbre was a fifth element closely embedded with the string colours of David Alberman, Hilaryjane Parker, Sally Pendlebury and Juliet Welchman. MacMillan is a master of liturgical music and in this highly-dramatic piece – not in itself devotional – serves Herbert’s unflinching declaration of faith well.
Religious connotations of a different kind provided the context for Davies’ Hymn to Artemis Locheia, a substantial essay for clarinet and string quartet. The divinity of the title is the Greek Goddess of Fertility, and the piece sets out to capture “the joy and exuberance experienced by couples when pregnancy is confirmed”. There was indeed joy and exuberance in the performance, with van de Wiel taking the solo part, but there was also what seemed to be an outpouring of grief and periods of contemplative musing. It was a stellar performance by the soloist whose tonal range kept the fabric of the piece from becoming too saturated with the composer’s mosaic-like string writing.
Wrapped around those pieces was A Wave of Voices by Electra Perivolaris, also receiving its first performance. It is a great wash of sound reflective of emotions evoked by the landscape and folk traditions of the West of Scotland. Although in places a little too fortissimo for my ears it proved to be well-suited to the excellent surround-speaker system of the venue and was a fine calling-card for the composer’s finesse with sonic composition.
As an epilogue to the proceedings Alberman was joined by pianist Sarah Nicholls for a MacMillan miniature, After the Tryst, and after that the attendees were treated to a wee dram of something warm, smooth and comforting. That’s another way to help get Scotland unwrapped.
