The Dunedin Consort’s status as one of many UK’s classiest ensembles is predicated on its traditionally appropriate performances of baroque and classical works, with a repertoire that hardly ever strays past the tip of the 18th century. However a collaboration with the guitarist Sean Shibe has taken the Dunedin effectively past its consolation zone, with a programme that begins within the Renaissance however reaches proper into the twenty first century, ending with the primary performances of Chanter, a specifically commissioned work for guitar and strings by Cassandra Miller.
Like a lot of Miller’s output, Chanter is predicated on current music, on this case a Scottish air as performed on the smallpipes by Brìghde Chaimbeul. Miller performed Chaimbeul’s efficiency of the air to Shibe, had him repeatedly sing it again to her and recorded the outcomes. From these recordings she made her personal transcriptions, which grew to become the idea of the 25-minute work, although the supply materials hardly seems in recognisable kind within the completed concerto. Tiny phrases and occasional cadences appear to trace at it, however the work unfolds extra like a collection of gently rocking meditations, lullabies nearly, wherein neither the guitar nor the string orchestra ever raises its voice.
At instances, although, the technical processes do appear to matter greater than the music they generate, and maybe that’s why Chanter appears to overstay its welcome, regardless of the wispy fantastic thing about the ending when the guitar line evaporates into harmonics, and the strings fall silent.
The premiere was preceded by three different modern items, additionally performed by Dunedin’s music director John Butt: James MacMillan’s From Galloway, in an association for guitar and strings, two actions from David Fennessy’s strikingly recent and imaginative Rosewoods, and Linda Catlin Smith’s strings-only Sinfonia, a shimmering succession of meshing chords from which occasional tendrils of melody emerge.
The Scottish hyperlinks ran proper by way of the programme. Shibe started with a sequence of items for lute from the Straloch and Rowallan manuscripts, exhibiting that he’s simply as particular and compelling a performer on that instrument as he’s a guitarist, in a position to make one thing wealthy and unusual out of the best melody. The Dunedin strings joined him for John Dowland’s Seaven Teares, after which, on their very own, performed items by Purcell and a Geminiani sonata for 2 violins, whose supply materials simply occurred to be a standard Scottish tune.
