Love Lines: deep emotions & island soundscapes in London Sinfonietta’s programme of contemporary Scottish music at Kings Place

London Sinfonietta – Love Lines – Electra Perivolaris

Love Lines: Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Peter Maxwell Davies, Electra Perivolaris; London Sinfonietta; Kings Place
Reviewed 6 December 2024

Contemporary Scottish music in a programme centred on Peter Maxwell Davies’ 2004 clarinet quintet exploring deep emotions arising from pregnancy, linked by a soundscape by Electra Perivolaris inspired by her home on Arran.

As part of Kings Place‘s Scotland Unwrapped season, London Sinfonietta presented Love Lines in Hall Two on Friday 6 December 2024, a programme of contemporary Scottish music centred around Peter Maxwell Davies‘ Hymn to Artemis Locheia alongside music by Judith Weir and James MacMillan, including the world public premiere of MacMillan’s Love Bade Me Welcome and the world premiere of Electra Perivolaris‘ A Wave of Voices. The performers were Jennifer France (soprano), Mark van de Wiel (clarinet), Simon Haram (saxophone) and members of the London Sinfonietta.

The programme was linked by a series of surround sound recordings, using the hall’s d&b SoundScape system, created by Electra Perivolaris. These used natural sounds that Perivolaris made around her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran. These moved from purely natural soundscape to sound art, not always restful, so that waves crashing around us morphed into something more disturbing. The way that Perivolaris used the system’s surround capabilities gave the soundscapes a surprisingly directional feel.

The formal programme began with Judith Weir’s 1984 piece, Sketches from a Bagpiper’s Album. Three pieces that form a short ‘instrumental opera’ based on the life of James Reid, a bagpiper in Prince Charlie’s Jacobite army who was executed by the English after the judge decided that the Scottish pipes were regarded as a weapon! The work was written for clarinet and piano, but was presented in Weir’s alternative instrumentation for soprano saxophone (Simon Haram) in the first two movements, and E flat clarinet and basset clarinet (Mark van de Wiel) in the final movement. Salute was almost aphoristic, the short, enlivening instrumental phrases having an almost rhapsodic feel, whilst Nocturne was a rather perky, rhythmic march. Finally, Lament began eerily high on the E flat clarinet contrasting this with the piano’s low register, creating something rather restless. With the change to basset clarinet, the music became more bagpipe-like. As with much of Weir’s work, the music did not give much away, leaving us to fill in the gaps.

James MacMillan’s new piece, Love bade me welcome set George Herbert’s well-known text for soprano (Jennifer France) and a string quartet made of two violins and two cellos. Whilst the text is known from Vaughan Williams’ setting, MacMillan’s approach was definitely not RVW. It began with dense harmonies in the strings complementing rather free arioso for the voice. A long vocalise-like section led to a remarkably trenchant approach to Herbert’s words, with MacMillan making them seem almost fierce and definitely remarkably intense.

Elektra Perivolaris’ new piece,  A Wave of Voices combined Simon Haram’s live saxophone with the aural soundscape, the piece almost emerging from the surrounding soundscape, the rhapsodic saxophone emerging from the waves and having a dialogue with them.

Peter Maxwell Davies’ 2004 work Hymn to Artemis Locheia for clarinet and string quartet was premiered by Dmitri Ashkenazy and the Brodsky Quartet. The work was commissioned by Professor Ian Craft in memory of his father and Maxwell Davies prepared for writing it by spending the day at a gynaecological clinic. The music is a reflection of the deep emotions experienced by those involved, couples experiencing pregnancy, and its name refers to the Greek Goddess of Fertility.

In one long movement, it began by contrasting agitated strings with high, intense clarinet. Throughout the work, it was these intense contrasts that came over, moments of quiet intensity, moments of lyricism and moments of violence. There were periods of concentrated ecstasy that even evoked the mysticism of Messiaen, as well as periods of intense melancholy. The whole ending with on an exuberantly jazzy note. Overall, I found the piece somewhat dense but remarkably intense and with stunningly committed performances.

The evening ended with a short piece by James MacMillan, After the Tryst for violin (David Alberman) and piano (Sarah Nicolls). The piece was inspired by MacMillan’s 1984 setting of William Soutar’s poem, The Tryst which MacMillan sang with his folk group Broadstone. After the Tryst gave us a free, rhapsodic violin over supportive but discreet piano, moving from energy and vigour to evocative and mysterious, but always with hints of Scots folk song.

London Sinfonietta – Mark van de Wiel (clarinets), Simon Haram (saxophone),. David Alberman & Hilaryjane Parker (violin), Paul Silverthorne (viola), Sally Pendlebury & Juliet Welchman (cello), Sarah icolls (piano).