Scottish Ensemble: Impulse: Music in Motion

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall New Auditorium - 08/03/24

An innovative approach to the performance of chamber string ensemble repertoire awaited the nigh-capacity audience gathered in the New Auditorium of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on the night of Friday 8th March.  The programme, titled ‘Impulse: Music in Motion’ presented Shostakovich’s ‘Chamber Symphony’ and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Serenade for Strings’ with enhanced theatrical physicality but undiminished musical emotive power, in an intense and immensely involving fusion of choreography and musical expression.  Unencumbered by music stands, the musicians played from memory, while moving through the performance space in movements devised in collaboration with choreographer Örjan Andersson.  The absence of sheet music also enabled a central artistic role for light and shade, with no fewer than 21 programmable portable slender standard lamps present in the performance space, in addition to the auditorium’s own lighting.  The performance was lit by Albin Åkerman.  Chairs for the 4 cellists and stools for the 2 bassists were initially at the back of the performance space; violinists and violists stood.

Having already experienced and reviewed the Scottish Ensemble’s ingeniously-lit gritty YouTube video production of the first of the two scherzi of Shostakovich’s ‘Chamber Symphony’ in early February, where I was wowed by the playing but critical of the loss of context inflicted by excerpting, my prayers were more than answered by Friday’s performance.  Slowly, one by one, the musicians entered the performance space, wandering disconsolately in a manner very evocative of the mood of the first movement of the Eighth Quartet, whose arrangement by Rudolf Barshai for string ensemble is the Chamber Symphony.  The slow fugue on the DSCH motif with recitative and aria episodes evokes the composer numbed with grief wandering through a scene of utter desolation.  The standing musicians, who had moved to the sides for the opening bars on cellos and basses, began to circulate around them, coming to rest facing the audience as the violence of the second movement was unleashed.  The trauma, panic and terror in the music found a graphic depiction as the four violists ganged up on a solitary violinist, her increasingly frantic attempts to escape culminating in a transfixed ‘crucifixion’ pose.  The grotesque, macabre waltz that followed featured the ironically humorous spectacle of the second violins dashing in a line to confront the other voices in turn with trills and shrieks.  The cellists moved forward for a sorrowful pleading aria before the ghostly muted reprise of the waltz.  The cellos and basses moved forward again for the start of the fourth movement, a menacing snarl punctuated by sets of three percussive chords, often thought to represent the drone of night bombers and the report of anti-aircraft artillery, the ghostly backlighting amplifying the sense of dread.  All players stood huddled together for the elegiac funeral march.  One cellist walked back, got a chair and performed the pleading ‘Ah Seryozha’ quotation from the opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ seated at the front.  A final muted volley of the guns and the desperately elegiac fugal finale was played.  After the final morendo sigh, the musicians laid down their instruments and walked slowly away, to total silence.  Artistic Director and leader of the ensemble, Jonathan Morton, remained.

There was no interval.  Jonathan performed a baroque fugal solo violin piece, unfamiliar to me but very Bach-like, initially sotto voce and with an improvisational feel.  Slowly, the other musicians returned to the performance space.  The opulent sound world of the Tchaikovsky was in immediately stunning contrast with that of the Shostakovich, glowingly vibrant and richly sonorous with sumptuous harmonies, conventional in a Mozartian way, but nonetheless immensely satisfying.  I was struck by how, though both works are undeniably chamber music, each is in its own way quite symphonic.  The choreography was less overtly theatrical yet seemed to radiate a warmth.  I found myself musing on how much of the experience of live chamber music is bound up with iconic body language, such as eye contact, smiling and the subtle gestures that acknowledge mutually responsive phrasing.  At the end of the first movement, the audience, who had remained silent since the start of the concert and spellbound at the end of the Shostakovich, released their pent-up appreciation with spontaneous tumultuous applause.  The standing musicians began to move as if waltzing with invisible partners (or at least their instruments), introducing the genial waltz of the second movement.  Cellos and basses were wistfully expressive in the central section, while the violas’ counter-melody in the reprise of the waltz were as lovely as I have heard – absolutely magical playing.  The slow movement, an Élégie in a melancholy nostalgic vein in contrast with the grief-stricken Shostakovich, was exquisitely expressive, passionate balletic movements mirroring the passionate music.  An episode for the violas showed again how virtuosi with a passion for chamber music can weave magic.  The con sord. conclusion of the movement was breathtakingly lovely.  The slow teasing introduction of the finale launched attacca.  The lighting suggested a sunrise.  The Russian dance got under way thrillingly (without anyone being made to do anything that would necessitate orthopaedic hospitalisation, of course).  Bright radiant sunlight from the standard lamps accompanied the declamatory return to the slow introduction of the piece.  The final scampering to the coda brought the piece to a close and the audience to its feet in a spontaneous standing ovation.

This was an unforgettable experience of innovative fusion art.  The music alone was interpretation of core repertoire at the pinnacle of excellence.  The choreography added an additional and complementary visual dimension.  Does this represent a template for the future of chamber performance?  Of course not.  But nor is it a gimmick.  The Scottish Ensemble continue to seal their reputation for adventurous innovation and a visionary approach to interpretation and connecting with audiences.  At the risk of repetitiveness: unforgettable.