Mystique and magic from on-song Scottish Ensemble

The Scottish Ensemble come in a three-in-one package. Music, musicians and staging. Very few ensembles have the imagination, or even the nerve, to use basic staging as part of their performance. At their concert in the Perth Concert Hall on Wednesday night, two single blackmesh screens added a mystique in keeping with the concert’s theme of social unrest. A cage or some sort of internment?

Quite possibly, as Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero’s Babel thoughts may have been on political unrest in her native country and the last work had been written in Second World War POW confinement. Music and politics can go together, but only in the measured way the SE plan their programming.

Montero started the proceedings with an improvisation which was quite beautiful. It’s a pity the SE had to follow this with an improvisation on three chords from a Messiaen work that was to end the programme. This didn’t sit well with me at all.

However, the music that followed more than made up for this. Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony is a wonderful fluctuation of fear, anxiety, despair and depression and I’d heard this superb unit perform it before. However, this masterful delivery considerably out-matched the others.

Even the contemporary machinations of Philip Glass and Peteris Vasks, the former’s Echorus and the latter’s Viatore, didn’t detract from an escalation of contentment.

Then came the evening’s crowning glories, Montero’s Babel and a movement from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Montero makes her point with eloquence and skill, her thoughts on tyranny and social unrest painted with passion, feeling and artistry. It really was a moving and telling work, both in performance and in construction.

To end with the elegiac eighth movement of the Messaien was as atmospheric a finale to any concert. Jonathan Morton’s performance was full of stunning serenity, and was matched by Montero’s sympathetic accompaniment. Absolutely fabulous!