Not for the first time, the idea of a chamber music concert in Glasgow’s grand galleries turned out to be better than the reality because of the challenges of the venue’s acoustic, so Jonathan Morton and the Scottish Ensemble pulled a rabbit from that tricky hat with the way they chose to end their performance.
The Danish String Quartet’s arrangement of the folk tune As I Walked Out requires the string players to whistle and encourages audience participation, and the ensemble appropriated it as their encore, trooping off the stage and through the audience whistling like linties.
The ruse made sense of the space in a way that forgave its earlier shortcomings, and even those were often balanced by thoughtful use of the long reverberation.
Most obviously that was in the amount of muscular pizzicato playing that featured in the instrumental programme, from the opening piece by Lithuanian composer Antanas Rekasius to the familiarity of the Barshai arrangement of the second movement of Ravel’s Petite symphonie a cordes.
There was a thread of contemporary responses to earlier music running through the evening that started with the Rekasius and included Tom Coult’s atmospheric Prelude (after Monsieur de Saint-Colombe) and UK-based Australian Lisa Illean’s clever arrangement of Chansons by Gilles Binchois.
That theme extended to the fascinating selections sung by guest soloist Heloise Werner which ranged from her Hermes Experiment bandmate Marianne Schofield’s settings of the songs of Julie Pinel and an animated and expressive reading of Barbara Strozzi’s Che si puo fare to her own semi-improvised Unspecified Intentions and more conventional Lullaby for a Sister.
In a revision of the published programme, Morton chose to follow that with his own arrangement of Pauline Viardot’s Berceuse, and, equally effectively, placed the Ravel ahead of the Strozzi song.
That made Errollyn Wallen’s Tree, a key piece for Werner which is the title track of the upcoming Hermes Experiment album as well as featuring on her own most recent disc, the climax of the night. Its balance of instrumental narrative from the strings with the last lyric of the evening from the soprano made it a suitable finale, save for that theatrical encore.
Perhaps, however, that procession revealed the static atmosphere of the rest of the evening and the school assembly nature of concerts in the gallery. The programme was only an hour and fifteen minutes long, but there was a lot of music in it and it is likely that the singer’s particular skills, and very skilled performance, seemed more integrated with those of the ensemble in other recitals on the tour.
The last of these Concerts for a Summer’s Night is at V&A Dundee this evening.
SopranoHeloise Werner talks to KEITH BRUCE about her collaboration with the Scottish Ensemble….and other plans.
There is nothing Scottish about French-born soprano, cellist and composer Heloise Werner but her career has forged strong connections with the music scene in Scotland.
The award-winning group she formed in her student years, The Hermes Experiment, was an early success of composer/entrepreneur Matthew Whiteside’s boundary-pushing concert series The Night With. . ., and the East Lothian-based Delphian label swiftly signed them up and released two albums, Here We Are and Song. As a solo artist, Werner has also made two albums for Delphian, Phrases and Close-Ups.
This year she has already worked with the BBC SSO’s Creative Partner Ilan Volkov on the premiere of her own Siren Suite with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and next week she has a run of six “Concerts for a Summer Night” as the guest soloist with the Scottish Ensemble, starting in Perthshire’s Rossie Byre and ending a week later at the V&A in Dundee, with stops in Strathpeffer, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh in between.
“Scottish Ensemble contacted me out of the blue a couple of years ago,” says Werner. “I knew about them of course, and I knew two of their musicians, but I didn’t really know the group or [director] Jonathan Morton, so it was a nice invitation to receive.
“There’s no brand new world premiere in the programme,” says the singer for whom such inclusions are customary, “but there are new arrangements, including two works of mine arranged for strings and voice.”
That pairing, Unspecified Intentions and Lullaby for my Sister, end her most recent album, and the Scottish Ensemble programme also includes Barbara Strozzi’s Che si puo fare, which opens the disc. The soprano will also sing Hermes Experiment bassist Marianne Schofield’s arrangements of early 18th century French composer Julie Pinel, and Tree by Errollyn Wallen, which is also on Close-Ups and will have another incarnation as the title track of the third Hermes Experiment album.
The overlaps in Werner’s artistic practice are obvious – her co-arranger on her own compositions is fellow cellist and life partner Colin Alexander – but it is an expanding world and those partnerships are key to her busy schedule. The next phase of Hermes Experiment’s work comes as the group joins her under the management of Askonas Holt.
“With the group we have a lot of dates in the diary and it’s looking really good. It is sometimes a challenge to balance things, so that will help. We’ve been going for 10 years now, and after releasing two albums in quick succession, we needed to think about what we did next.
“Over the last few years composing has become a much bigger thing for me, and it wasn’t when I started Hermes. My work is now split about 50/50 between composing and performing and that actually makes it more flexible in terms of my schedule. If I have a lot of writing to do I can do that at any time and anywhere.”
The upcoming Hermes Experiment album will be the first to feature pieces written by members of the group, and the soprano already has her own third solo album planned out.
“For the new album I am inviting other singers so there will be five singers and three cellists, and the music will be a mix of the core quintet, cello trio and a mix of the two that will play a new work I am writing for everybody. I’ve invited my favourite singers and they are quite international, and very versatile. We’ll be doing a mixture of early madrigals, some more modern things and my own music.”
A performance of the set is already scheduled for July next year in London’s Wigmore Hall, where Werner is an Associate Artist, and the recording will follow, with release on Delphian in 2027.
Werner’s range and interest in experimental vocal techniques has invited comparisons with American composer/performers Cathy Berberian and Meredith Monk, of which the soprano is understandably wary.
“I suppose there are similarities with those amazing pioneers, and I admire all they’ve done, but I didn’t try to copy anyone. In fact, I checked them out after people made those comparisons.
“I always knew that I wanted to be a musician but it took me a while to figure out how I was going to do that. I knew I had some skills that weren’t valued in traditional settings, and I wasn’t particularly successful in auditions for parts in operas.
“So really early on I started the Hermes Experiment, and then I started composing and having a solo career. It’s been quite organic as it evolved, and I never gave up thinking that I was going to have work.
“It is still a work-in-progress, and now bigger organisations like orchestras are interested in what I do and what I offer as a package. They are interested in working with me on curating programmes or on specific concepts and it’s exciting to have reached that level now.”
This year that has included that collaboration with Volkov on her Siren Suite, for voice and chamber orchestra, which depicts five figures with an affinity for the sea. It will have a further performance at the end of November in Paris in a new arrangement for the Orchestra Philharmonique de Radio France.
Last weekend Werner unveiled yet another new project at the Glasshouse in Gateshead, working with a dozen musicians from the Royal Northern Sinfonia. The Cuckoo’s Hour included her own music alongside that of Nico Muhly, Oliver Leith, Freya Waley-Cohen, John Lely and Colin Alexander, and arranged the musicians around her like the figures on a clock.
The title piece was – of course – a world premiere, and talks are beginning about that performance being seen and heard elsewhere. The earlier partnership with Volkov naturally brings his annual Tectonics event at Glasgow City Halls to mind, a thought which Werner embraces. “He’s such a clever musician. I’d love to be involved in Tectonics.”
She is at a stage where choices have to be made, however.
“I wouldn’t take on anything that didn’t suit me and my voice. Sometimes I get asked to do things that I know I could do, but for which I wouldn’t be the best person, so I recommend someone else. I’d rather so something that suits not just my voice, but also my personality and my interests.”
