The Scottish Ensemble

The Queen’s Hall

The Scottish Ensemble has become a valued part of Scotland's classical music scene in the 50 years since it was created as a baroque ensemble in 1969 to accompany baroque operas in Kinross. Today it is a collective of outstanding musicians who play string instruments standing up (apart from the cellos!), and they give concerts across Scotland often in collaboration with unusual partners in theatre, art and science. Tonight they are playing two octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu. They are led by guest director Marianne Thorsen, who is a very distinguished chamber musician from Norway. For 10 years Marianne was leader of the Nash Ensemble, whose continuing skilled and innovative work we witnessed recently at the Queens Hall.(see review) She seems very much at home with the Ensemble, who respond well to her leadership. Of course it helps that they are all superb individual musicians, including Tristan Gurney ex leader of the Edinburgh Quartet, and Jane Atkins, formerly leader of the violas at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

The Mendelssohn Octet is an amazing work, particularly since Mendelssohn wrote it when he was only 16. Rosie Davies in her good programme notes said that he "had a lovely time writing it"! The Mendelssohn family apparently had regular Sunday soirées where the young Felix would entertain the company with his compositions and it may have been heard there first in 1825. However he wrote it as a gift for his violin teacher Eduardo Ritz. It was revised in 1832 but not given in public until 1836 in Leipzig, and became enormously successful afterwards. Conrad Wilson the great Scottish music critic said "it's youthful verve, brilliance and perfection make it one of the miracles of 19th century music". Of course Mendelssohn loved Scotland and did his first grand tour here when he was 20, a tour that inspired his Scottish Symphony and the Hebrides Overture, but we can't claim the Octet as Scottish! However the Scottish Ensemble gave it a superb outing tonight. Mendelssohn said the first movement was to be played "with fire" and the Ensemble certainly delivered that with style, often sounding more like a chamber orchestra than an octet. The interaction of the players was very special to behold, the nods and smiles and the movement of their bodies with the music. Jane Atkins on the viola is in particular always a delight to watch as well as to listen to.The decent audience in the Queens Hall gave it a warm reception and everyone was buzzing at the interval with the quality of the music

The second Octet after the interval was very different. It was by George Enescu (1881-1955), Romania's greatest composer, although he spent much of his time abroad, did particularly in Paris, where he died in 1955 and is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery. .Like Mendelssohn he was a child prodigy indeed his first published composition is "Romanian Land, an opus for piano and and violin by George Enescu, aged five years and a quarter"! At the age of seven he became the youngest student ever admitted to the Vienna Conservatory and gave his first concert aged 10 at the court in the presence of the Emperor Franz Joseph! Later he made a big impression on European music circles. Pablo Casals the great cellist said "Enescu was the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart and one of the great geniuses of modern music". His Octet, written when he was 19 (as Einar Andersen says in his programme notes " he was a veteran by then") took him four years to write and he said it was hard work. It is very different from the Mendelssohn Octet, not as sweetly melodic and at times displaying the influences of the modern music developing in Vienna and elsewhere  in the early twentieth century. It is a much more integrated work than the Mendelssohn, all the musicians play together most of the time and he links the movements together closely. It isn't as well known as the Mendelssohn, not as showy but still very beautiful and well worth playing, a great companion work for the concert. Again the Ensemble played it flawlessly and, whilst we might not wholly agree with Casals, we discovered that Enescu was a very fine composer. All in all this was a perfect concert.