Scottish Ensemble Shifting Patterns Queen's Hall Edinburgh 27th October 2025 Review
Scottish Ensemble were at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight performing “Shifting Patterns” – a musical focus on two very distinctive voices in modern and contemporary music – Polish composer Henryk Górecki (1933 – 2010) and Scottish composer Anna Meredith.
The first half of tonight’s programme of music featured Henryk Górecki’s 1991 “Quasi Una Fantasia (Like a Fantasy)”, a.k.a “String Quartet No. 2”. This is one of three works for string quartets originally written for the Kronos Quartet. Tonight, that work was arranged for the larger Scottish Ensemble.
Henryk Górecki was always clear about his musical references to Beethoven in this work and he made no attempt to hide (in fact he highlighted) what he referred to as “Beethovian Chords”. For the listener, those references, well more homages, to Beethoven are clearly there, but this work is not simply a contemporary musical score wrapped around some Beethoven musical structures, it is far more than that. This performance by Scottish Ensemble brought to life a work that over its four movements has a double identity. Somehow, Górecki has created anchors of the familiar to parts of this work that allow the listener to fell on comfortable ground. That comfortable ground is, however, always shifting as his music moves into darker, more ominous and less conventional soundscapes.
One of the most distinctive aspects of this work is the underpinning of a repeated note on the cello. Maintaining this metronome, almost mechanical, timing in such a fashion is never an easy task for any musician, but that is what is needed to give this work much of its atmosphere. At times, this note, for me anyhow, had overtones to that repeating blip on a medical monitor, but it could also be interpreted as heavy and ominous footsteps.
Taken over its four very distinctive movements, “Quasi Una Fantasia” has a very cinematic feel to it. This work could so easily have been the soundtrack to a classic thriller film and there are two very distinctive voices to it, almost at times like those of a hunter and their prey.
The second half of this programme was, for me, a long overdue one highlighting the work of one of the most distinctive and imaginary voices in contemporary music, that of Anna Meredith. Scottish Ensemble have a history of working with Anna (who was in the audience tonight), and the two have an obvious respect for each other’s musical visions.
There were seven works performed tonight by Anna Meredith – “Honeyed Words”, “Tuggemo”, “Chorale”, “Shill”, “Haze”, “Blackfriars” and “Nautilus”. All but two of these works (Tuggemo and Chorale) were arranged for the strings of The Scottish Ensemble by Richard Jones, violist from the Ligeti Quartet. Performing on-stage with Scottish Ensemble tonight was Freya Goldmark, first violinist from the Ligeti Quartet.
My first encounter with Anna Meredith was listening to her work as a composer of electronic music, and arranging some of these songs performed tonight for strings must have been a challenge for Richard Jones. That task of adding something new to these works without losing the integrity of the original musical concepts obviously met with the approval of Anna Meredith herself as she took to the stage to tell us all a little bit about her music and her thoughts on hearing these works as performed by Scottish Ensemble.
Anna Meredith is a composer who truly defies the concept of being able to be defined by one genre of music, and that ability to move so freely, so fluidly, in and out of different musical structures was clear from these seven works performed tonight. Over these very different works there was a deep understanding of the structures of what most people would define as classical music, but also an exploration of sound itself. Anna Meredith is an explorer of soundscapes, someone who is not afraid to open doors within those soundscapes and venture into what lies beyond them.
All of the seven works by Anna Meredith were accompanied tonight by their own visuals projected on screen behind the Scottish Ensemble making this literally a concert of not only shifting patterns of music, but visuals too.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
The first half of tonight’s programme of music featured Henryk Górecki’s 1991 “Quasi Una Fantasia (Like a Fantasy)”, a.k.a “String Quartet No. 2”. This is one of three works for string quartets originally written for the Kronos Quartet. Tonight, that work was arranged for the larger Scottish Ensemble.
Henryk Górecki was always clear about his musical references to Beethoven in this work and he made no attempt to hide (in fact he highlighted) what he referred to as “Beethovian Chords”. For the listener, those references, well more homages, to Beethoven are clearly there, but this work is not simply a contemporary musical score wrapped around some Beethoven musical structures, it is far more than that. This performance by Scottish Ensemble brought to life a work that over its four movements has a double identity. Somehow, Górecki has created anchors of the familiar to parts of this work that allow the listener to fell on comfortable ground. That comfortable ground is, however, always shifting as his music moves into darker, more ominous and less conventional soundscapes.
One of the most distinctive aspects of this work is the underpinning of a repeated note on the cello. Maintaining this metronome, almost mechanical, timing in such a fashion is never an easy task for any musician, but that is what is needed to give this work much of its atmosphere. At times, this note, for me anyhow, had overtones to that repeating blip on a medical monitor, but it could also be interpreted as heavy and ominous footsteps.
Taken over its four very distinctive movements, “Quasi Una Fantasia” has a very cinematic feel to it. This work could so easily have been the soundtrack to a classic thriller film and there are two very distinctive voices to it, almost at times like those of a hunter and their prey.
The second half of this programme was, for me, a long overdue one highlighting the work of one of the most distinctive and imaginary voices in contemporary music, that of Anna Meredith. Scottish Ensemble have a history of working with Anna (who was in the audience tonight), and the two have an obvious respect for each other’s musical visions.
There were seven works performed tonight by Anna Meredith – “Honeyed Words”, “Tuggemo”, “Chorale”, “Shill”, “Haze”, “Blackfriars” and “Nautilus”. All but two of these works (Tuggemo and Chorale) were arranged for the strings of The Scottish Ensemble by Richard Jones, violist from the Ligeti Quartet. Performing on-stage with Scottish Ensemble tonight was Freya Goldmark, first violinist from the Ligeti Quartet.
My first encounter with Anna Meredith was listening to her work as a composer of electronic music, and arranging some of these songs performed tonight for strings must have been a challenge for Richard Jones. That task of adding something new to these works without losing the integrity of the original musical concepts obviously met with the approval of Anna Meredith herself as she took to the stage to tell us all a little bit about her music and her thoughts on hearing these works as performed by Scottish Ensemble.
Anna Meredith is a composer who truly defies the concept of being able to be defined by one genre of music, and that ability to move so freely, so fluidly, in and out of different musical structures was clear from these seven works performed tonight. Over these very different works there was a deep understanding of the structures of what most people would define as classical music, but also an exploration of sound itself. Anna Meredith is an explorer of soundscapes, someone who is not afraid to open doors within those soundscapes and venture into what lies beyond them.
All of the seven works by Anna Meredith were accompanied tonight by their own visuals projected on screen behind the Scottish Ensemble making this literally a concert of not only shifting patterns of music, but visuals too.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Please note that unless requested by performers/pr/venues that this website no longer uses the "star rating" system on reviews.