East Neuk Festival: Su-a & Friends: ‘Tango Tango’
Anstruther Town Hall - 02/07/23
Mr McFall’s Chamber: Su-a Lee, cello/saw | Gordon Bragg, violin | Robert McFall, violin | Brian Schiele, viola | Graeme McNaught, keyboard | Rick Standley, double bass | Stuart Semple, drums
Mr McFall’s Chamber formed in 1996 around a core handful of string players from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Ballet, with a mission to take varied eclectic multi-genre, and usually less well-known, repertoire to less traditional audiences in less traditional venues, like classical 20th-century pieces to night clubs, for instance. From the outset, this infectiously unconventional project (and undeniably the charisma and bubbly personality of always-smiling cellist Su-a Lee) have attracted enthusiastic regular collaborators as required for particular programmes. So it was on the afternoon of 2nd July in Anstruther Town Hall, for a programme subtitled ‘Tango Tango’. Founder members Su-a, Robert McFall (2nd violin), Brian Schiele (who is half-Argentinian, viola) and Rick Standley (double bass) were joined by Gordon Bragg (first violin), Graeme McNaught (keyboard) and Stuart Semple (drums) for a programme built around the dance form that grew around a disreputable Buenos Aires curiosity, in the first decade of the 20th century, into an international sensation. There were no printed programmes available; the programme items were introduced by Su-a and Robert. The tangos traced the spread and development of the genre, via Paris in the second decade of the century, to Poland between the wars and Finland in the 40s and 50s, interspersed with English Elizabethan gems. The concert was very well attended.
Piazzola’ s ‘Michelangelo ’70’, a tango named for a night club in Buenos Aires where the composer and virtuoso bandoneónist played frequently and the year of composition 1970, set the ball rolling. Two Polish tangos, by Jewish musicians Jerzy Petersburski and another whose name I did not catch, were archly cosmopolitan with more than a hint of klezmer.
A Galliard & Allemande by John Dowland furnished a pleasant Elizabethan interlude, with the electronic keyboard playing on a ‘lute’ stop. A tango-like piece by Mexican composer Javier Álvarez, Metro Chabacano (1987) was a commission by the Mexico City Metro system, its irregular metre certainly suggestive of a short train journey. Another Dowland piece, an arrangement of the more stereotypical ‘semper Dowland; semper dolens’ slow lute piece ‘Sir Henry Umpton’s Funerall’ struck a sombre note.
A Finnish and a Polish tango were followed by another Piazzola favourite, the melancholy ‘Soledad’’ (1968), in an arrangement for cello as the melodic instrument, were atmospheric and evocative. Two Cuban tangos followed: ‘La Bella Cubana’ by José White Lafitte and ‘Adiós a Cuba’ by Ignacio Cervantes, both composers exiled due to holding fundraising concerts in aid of the Cuban independence movement. The first was festive with a central cakewalk/ragtime section; the second a slow melancholy piano solo.
We had been ‘warned’ that Su-a’s second instrument, the musical saw, was present in the building, so it was only a matter of time before it appeared, and appear it did in the first of two pieces by US band leader Raymond Scott, written for his 6-member “Quintette” (he disliked the word “Sextet”), accompanied by Graeme on synthesiser. The second Scott piece, ‘Oil Gusher’, is a jazzy perpetuum mobile not unlike Khachaturian’s Sabre dance, with a bluesier central section, closing the programme.
As an encore, Su-A on the saw was accompanied by the band in a dreamy rendition of the hymn tune from Sibelius’ ‘Finlandia’. A super end to a super concert.