Our debut at Usher Hall!

On Monday 22nd September we made our Usher Hall debut at the prestigious venue’s Emerging Artist Concert Series which is in partnership with Live Music Now Scotland, an early-career scheme we have been involved with for just over two years now. We were especially excited about the concept of this concert series, which invites audiences to sit in the choir stalls, players in turn faced away from the main hall. This offered a more intimate performance experience as opposed to larger-scale orchestral concerts, and was acoustically very interesting for us to hear our sound resonate across such a big venue but in a non-traditional format.

With this in mind, we presented a varied programme of both lively and more reflective music linked to water, dream imagery and seasonal change, inspired by our performance at En Dehors du Cadre in Oyonnax during our French Tour a few months previously. This included music by Finnish composer Erkki Melartin, Breton composer Jean Cras, Irish composer David Fennessy and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Our audiences were particularly struck by the vividness of Melartin’s String Trio–a piece where Finnish folk melodies and hints of romantic atonalism collide to create sweeping vignettes of Finnish landscape and character. We also received lovely feedback in how we bookended the concert with excerpts from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Fennessy’s ‘An Open Field (come closer, come closer), two pieces of very different genres, the latter of which was written directly in response to Bach’s dream imagery and playful counterpoint.

We had a lovely time connecting with our audience, presenting spoken introductions and getting to chat informally after the concert. We’re grateful to LMNS for this opportunity to showcase young artists and would encourage you to explore the rest of the series featuring our friends and colleagues in other chamber ensembles!