Cumnock Tryst Ensemble
Cumnock Old Church
In the hours running up to the opening concert of this year’s Cumnock Tryst festival, footage of East Ayrshire’s head of education Linda McAuley-Griffiths ridiculing the value of music’s place in the school curriculum was running rampage on social media. “I’m no really seeing the point of a wean knocking seven bells out of a glockenspiel,” was her careless remark caught on camera at a September council meeting. She has since apologised and said her words were taken out of context.
It was hard to ignore the crassness of McAuley-Griffiths’ comments as this year’s festival opening concert got under way. It featured the Cumnock Tryst Ensemble, a flexible instrumental collective established last year as a high-calibre performance group populated by some of Scotland’s most prominent musicians. Equally, though, it functions as a resident resource for the educational and community projects spearheaded by Tryst founder and globally famous composer Sir James McMillan, himself a product of an East Ayrshire schooling.
This was the Ensemble’s own showcase, an assorted combo of flute and strings, and a programme of mainly contemporary works that utilised various permutations within. At this concert’s heart, though, was the shadow of founder-cellist Christian Elliott, who died earlier this year and the age of 41, and whose memory was central to a programme tinged with personal reflection and homage.
Individually, the performances were often touching, at times scintillating. As an opener, Duncan Strachan’s unaccompanied cello struck a neat conversation between the ecstatic freneticism and meditative acceptance underpinning MacMillan’s Easter-inspired And he rose. Violist Felix Tanner completed the brief MacMillan solo coupling with In memoriam, written three years ago to mark the passing of Julliard String Quartet violist Roger Tapping, its moments of despair challenged by an intense virtuosity.
With Judith Weir’s St Agnes, a simple elegy for viola and cello, the air of contemplation prevailed, yet its intriguing play between playing styles – bowed legato tropes punctuated by pizzicato flourishes – felt like a gathering release en route to the heightened exchanges of Weir’s The Bagpiper’s String Trio, quirkily excitable but with ghostly undertones. Violinist Gordon Bragg made his first appearance here, bringing a top-end gloss to the ensemble.
The third brisk movement from Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Assobio a Jato (Jet Whistle) introduced flautist Ruth Morley, her duo performance with Strachan electrically-charged in its inexorable journey to a soaring catharsis, only then to be calmed by Lisa Robertson’s enchanting Dlùthas for solo violin, inspired by the composer’s own wistful improvisation in Midlothian’s Rosslyn Chapel – though possibly also by Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Morley re-took the stage for her own quietly animated Whisper.
What followed verged weirdly on the burlesque, the RSNO’s eccentric principal double bass Nikita Naumov playing for laughs as he introduced Julius Goltermann’s Souvenirs de Bellini – a predictably lugubrious set of difficult variations for cello and bass, even more so in what seemed like a touch-and-go performance at times. Nor, despite the obvious virtuosity on display, was Naumov’s solo performance of Emil Tabakov’s Motivy as defined is it might have been, some moments leaning dangerously towards heavy metal.
What had been missing thus far in the programme was a piece involving the full ensemble, a factor remedied in the closing performance of New Cumnock-born Jay Capperauld’s superbly crafted Schiehallion!. Commissioned in 2023 by King Charles for the Honours of Scotland ceremony in Edinburgh, and based on Scottish tunes selected by the monarch, Capperauld’s acute sense of characterisation, succinct originality and wit is laid bare. Harmonic ingenuity, imaginative texturing, and the sheer joy expressed in this sparkling music was met by a spirit of delivery to match.
It also pointed retrospectively to a weakness in the design and presentation of this programme. Up to a point, it had felt a bit like a routine school concert – one act off, one act on, too much unstructured chat between items, and maybe let’s get the sad stuff out of the way first. Could the church space have been more creatively purposed, Robertson’s lovely Dlùthas, for instance performed from one of the empty balconies? More imaginative production and choreography would have made all the difference.
Ken Walton
(Photo: Stuart Armitt)