Review Details
LUNCHBREAK CONCERT In association with S-O-U-N-D And ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY MUSIC
Alan Cooper
21 November 2009
ABERDEEN ART GALLERY
Saturday’s Lunchbreak concert brought together several important events running concurrently in Aberdeen just now. This is the concluding weekend of the Sound Festival and we are now well into the full panoply of events associated with the University of Aberdeen Music Prize. It highlights performances of a wide range of music by the competition’s illustrious judge, Scottish composer James MacMillan. This concert given by the University of Aberdeen New Music Group contained worthy input to all these happenings.
To open the concert, soprano Jillian Bain-Christie with pianist Ed Jones gave us a striking performance of Between Eternity and Time, Paul Mealor’s three settings of poems by Emily Dickinson. I had already been deeply impressed by the newly released CD, Stabat Mater which includes these songs sung by Irene Drummond and here again was the ice-brittle piano writing to complement the lovely pure soprano singing of Jillian Bain-Christie, a splendid start to the programme.
Northern Skies for cello and piano was composed by James MacMillan for young players but there is no sense in these often intensely atmospheric pieces of a composer “writing down” to young learners. He gives them music of real intrinsic quality. George Chittenden came up with an amazingly buoyant and springy sense of marching feet in March while in Celtic Hymn with its suggestion of attractive “Songs of the Hebrides” melody, Ed Jones, here switching from piano to cello made the music sing out bravely. Barn Dance was wonderfully light footed, thanks again George, and Northern Skies which gives the collection its title had a graphic sense of the light changes that the sky gives us in these parts.
Paul Tierney is the director of the New Music Group. As well as being a gifted baritone, he is himself a composer and as his Three Housman Songs for the unusual combination of soprano and bass clarinet proved - a far more than just promising one. Here Jillian Bain-Christie was partnered with bass clarinettist Michelle Yarnell. Jillian coped easily with the sinuous melodic twists and turns that Tierney has written into his score and although the bass clarinet provided a kind of anchor against which to set the soaring and diving of the soprano it was itself remarkably limber and agile.
A few weeks ago at the Sound Festival I heard James MacMillan’s marvellous settings of poems by the Scottish poet William Souter. The Children, inspired by the horrors of Guernica is one of the most powerful in its impact. Having heard it beautifully sung by soprano Irene Drummond, it was fascinating to hear the baritone version with none other than Paul Tierney with once again George Chittenden at the piano. Paul light baritone revelled in the high tessitura of the song. His diction was superb ensuring that the song made its full amazing impact. The fact that in the forecourt of the gallery which can be quite noisy the voice of a small child could be heard clearly during the song transformed it into an even more devastating emotional experience.