The Scottish Ensemble rounded off their short Scottish tour in Perth with an engrossing ‘Shifting Patterns’ programme showcasing two distinctive musical voices, Anna Meredith and Henryk Górecki. It was exciting to hear the Ensemble breaking new musical ground and building on their successful performances of Anno, now ten years old and recently revived at the Barbican. For this performance, electronics were used, each instrument individually miked.
Górecki’s Quasi una fantasia was the single work in the first half, a version for string orchestra of his String Quartet no. 2, written for the Kronos Quartet. In four distinctive movements ranging from austere beauty, musical loops and fiery energy, it was an intense experience, engrossingly vivid. The work references Beethoven with three major chords standing out as waymarkers which wrapped up players and audience in a magical spell. The opening Largo was underpinned by cellos and bass on a repeated trudging note and sighing violas, the arc growing organically and brightening as the upper strings added mournful tones. A vigorous angular dialogue set up across the ensemble in Deciso, energetico, leader Jonathan Morton driving his players in a thrillingly menacing beat, alive to the filmic quality of the music. A dreamily hazy Arioso had a dissonant melody played at two pitches simultaneously, the cellos slow marching underneath. Tension was calmed by the Beethovenian chords before the piece erupted into the final flowing and joyous Allegro, the music pulling back suddenly to reflect the opening movement. Amplification was very light, but I enjoyed the tiny electronic twists`like moving the two violas ever so slightly out of phase with each other, like faintly beating organ pipes, adding ethereal piquancy.
The Ligeti Quartet has been performing Anna Meredith's works around the world, their viola player Richard Jones arranging her music, expanded here for the larger string forces with instrument amplification now turned up to match the electronic soundtrack. It was a true assault on the senses with wonderful swirling visual images from Ewan Jones Morris projected on a screen. Honeyed Words was a showcase for cellist Peteris Sokolovskis’ passionate playing, accompanied by drones from the ensemble and colliding orange and clear sphere visuals. Morton told us to fasten our seatbelts for Tuggemo (meaning a swarm of beasties), the players swooping and diving with glissandi against a drum and bass track and visuals of thronging polychromic beetles and ladybirds.
MRI scanners are far from silent, and can be an unsettling experience. Meredith recorded the sounds for Chorale, here produced in surround sound as the strings made loud mechanical jabs in this highly effective track. Freya Goldmark, leader of the Ligeti Quartet and playing in the ensemble, introduced Meredith’s greatest hit Nautilus as a “real banger”, the top strings setting up repeated major rhythm loops like a heartbeat as the lower strings dug into the ever-rising chromatic scales, as Meredith described them “like trudging along a Scottish beach”. It’s a hugely exciting track as harmonies clash, rhythms shift and collide. I loved watching Goldmark swaying to the beat, completely in the moment. Haze, a mesmerising standalone movement from Anno, shimmered in an electronic weave, Blackfriars used bouncing bows hypnotically with fragile flurries of notes. Rounding off, Shill was a frantic frenzied whirl, cellist Niamh Molloy upping the bass sound, rounding off music which could have sat as happily at a rock festival or concert hall.
