EVEN by their own peerless standards, the musicians of the Hebrides Ensemble excelled themselves in their scintillating academy recital at the weekend. Usually, when a new work is included in the programme, musicians get it out of the way
first, before proceeding to more familiar fare.
The Hebrides, on Friday, kept the new composition till last, and, in so doing, held an ace up their sleeves. Seldom have I heard a work by a student composer which was more immediate in its impact, more lucid in its intention, better crafted, or sparkling in its effect than the mischievously-entitled Impog (a conflation of Imp and Ogre), written by Claire Griffin, Dublin-born post-graduate composer in her early twenties, now studying at the RSAMD.
Not only was Impog extremely well-written for the septet of instruments in The Hebrides (string trio, wind trio, and piano), but its strongly rhythmic impetus, with persistent two-chord jazzy punctuations, and a pungent flavour somewhere between Gershwin and Stravinsky, was presented with fire and exuberance by the brilliantly-prepared Hebrides players.
It also formed a good counterpart to Stravinsky's phenomenally intricate and exquisitely structured Septet at the start of the programme - a real rarity that here achieved the attention it deserved from these top-drawer musicians (in a group that, for the first time as far as I'm aware, featured a student player in Christine Smith, an alert, articulate horn player who more than held her own among her mature virtuoso colleagues).
In between the two septets, The Hebrides played Glinka's Trio Pathetique, an oddball, bottom-drawer piece that had little to say, and Jean Francaix's String Trio, a first-class piece that said everything with subtlety, and scarcely raised its voice in doing so.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article