First published in The Herald on 23 September, 2014

Don’t let anyone tell you that the narrative of Acis and Galatea is too vapid for decent drama, nor that an opera in concert performance can’t be properly entertaining. What little plot there is to Handel’s 1718 pastoral mini-opera involves a nymph, a shepherd and an evil monster, all lifted from book eight of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Usually a performance is worth sitting through for is its gorgeous music alone: this concise little two-acter contains some of Handel’s most irresistible tunes.

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First published in The Herald on 22 September, 2014

The terrific French oboist Francois Leleux was artist in residence at this year’s Lammermuir Festival, and he used the opportunity to explore repertoire from Bach to Berio. He is a fearless, flawless player (during this recital he breezily turned pages with one hand while playing with the other). His sound is plush and enormous. It would be a treat to hear him in just about any music.

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First published in The Herald on 22 September, 2014

All violinists have to confront Bach at some point or other: the composer’s six partitas and sonatas are the bedrock of the instrument’s solo repertoire and the benchmark for generations of great players. Polish violinist Bartosz Woroch, born in 1984, devised his late-night Lammermuir Festival recital around the first of the sonatas: the dark G-minor, with its searching Adagio and fitful Presto finale. Around it he programmed two 20^th century works, both also in G-minor, both directly inspired by Bach’s sonata.

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First published in The Herald on 22 September, 2014

After all the tensions of past days and weeks, what a balsam this was. Olivier Messiaen’s monumental Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus is a two-and-a-half-hour outpouring of ardour, hope and kaleidoscopic imagination. Written in occupied Paris in 1944 for the woman who later became his second wife, it is the composer’s best-known piano work – and yet few pianists can fully encompass its vast architecture, intense colours and astounding expressive range.

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First published in the Guardian on 21 September, 2014

Emotions have been running fraught in Scotland whichever way you look at it, and the need for a collective unfurling is palpable. This Lammermuir Festival concert of fervent works by Wagner, Strauss and Elgar performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – an ensemble whose post-referendum future has been hotly debated – was never going to feel like business as usual. And considering the BBC’s contested neutrality through the referendum, a quip from conductor Martyn Brabbins (who introduced an encore from Elgar’s Serenade for Strings by saying that we could now have “sweet dreams of a happy future”) wasn’t hugely useful.

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First published in The Herald on 15 September, 2014

‘Re-defining the string orchestra’ has been the Scottish Ensemble motto for some time; more and more, they’re risking the kind of projects with the imagination and dynamism to live up to it. They’re getting out of standard concert formats and concert halls and determinedly crafting an image to appeal to a younger, hipper crowd. This latest venture was called 20^th Century Perspectives: City Spaces and Strings. It was staged in a disused part of Richard Seifert’s 1972 Anderston Centre, that quietly brutalist concrete warren overlooking the throng of M8 interchanges just south of Charring Cross. A bar had been set up, lights were low, the Ensemble wore regulation jeans and trainers. Site-specific art by Toby Paterson feaured large, intriguing Perspex screens painted in primary colours and begging to be walked around, hidden behind, gazed through.

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First published in the Guardian on 15 September, 2014

It’s been a long birthday season for Peter Maxwell Davies, from midsummer concerts in Orkney to a late-night Prom on the big day itself. This Glasgow finale felt like a homecoming among friends. There were solo, chamber and orchestral works performed by musicians who have known the composer for decades, and there were birthday presents: three surprise tributes by fellow Scottish composers. Sally Beamish, Alasdair Nicolson and James MacMillan each presented short pieces responding to aspects of Maxwell Davies’s legacy. All three spoke fondly of ‘Max’ as an inspiration and a generous source of encouragement. There was a lot of love in the room.

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