Psappha and The Hebrides Ensembles celebrate 25 years of music-making with a new commission, a tribute to Maxwell Davies and Schoenberg’s soulful Verklärte Nacht.
Always with an eye for the unusual, The Hebrides Ensemble surpassed themselves brilliantly with a lively programme of Amerian influenced music, including Elvis on bassoon.
Unusually for a classical concert, the Queen's Hall was decked out with cabaret tables. Seated at the front I had a unique perspective on audio elements such as blend and separation of instruments and such visual elements as musicians' cues (varying from direct eye contact to trusting peripheral vision) and the normally overlooked feature of footwork.Herbert Howells 1921 Rhapsodic Quintet Op.
The Jam House is a jazz and blues club occupying the BBC’s former Queen Street Studios in Edinburgh. Now owned by Jools Holland and designer Neil Tabbitt, its spacious Georgian interior is occasionally given over to theatrical and musical events.
The Kings Place programme booklet for Since it was the Day of Preparation… folds like a thin papery triptych. Yet, the composer’s photograph does not occupy the central panel. Indeed, gushing verbal bombast, a feature all too common in performances of new music, was pleasantly absent.
At one extreme of musical preparation, early music specialists rely on research to ensure authentic performance of music by composers long dead. At the other, composers writing today might well be acquainted with the performers and consult them on the technical possibility of some passages and attend rehearsals.
American Pioneers, the latest Hebrides Ensemble programme, featured five U.S. composers in what musical director, William Conway described as "a slice" of contemporary music from that vast country. Minimalism, as one might expect, featured. Jennifer Higdon's Smash (2005) opened with what felt like a celebration of our obsession with speed.
The lively acoustic of the lovely Stenton Parish Church, 23 miles east of Edinburgh, hosted the fourth of sixteen concerts in this year's Lammermuir Festival, the motto of which is Beautiful music – beautiful places. I have to confess to a carbon sin of the mind in being prepared to undertake the 46-mile car journey to hear 5 minutes of music by György Kurtág.
Many writers dream of having letters after their name, particularly if those letters are -esque. The idea that one's prose style prompts recognition and imitation has an obvious appeal. Few could have been more surprised at attracting this suffix than Franz Kafka (1883–1924) who, having had no novels published in his lifetime urged, without success, the posthumous destruction of his opus.
