SCO & Colin Currie, Edinburgh review: 'a concert of discoveries'
Under Colin Currie’s compelling direction, the SCO drew magical textures and colours from two recent scores by Steve Reich, writes David Kettle
SCO & Colin Currie, Edinburgh ★★★★★
Who knows, quipped percussionist/director Colin Currie in one of his informal chats with the audience during this Thursday night performance, maybe these Steve Reich+ concerts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra might become a regular fixture. On the strength of his vivid, powerful and deeply (if sometimes unconventionally) beautiful evening of music – and also on the strength the audience’s enthusiastic reception – they really should.
Currie is a man who clearly lives, breathes and profoundly loves Reich’s music: that much was clear from his buoyant, driven accounts of two of the composer’s more recent scores, Runner and Double Sextet. Those pieces might not quite have the process-as-music transparency and inevitability of some of Reich’s classic earlier works, but under Currie’s urgent, compelling direction, they were compendia of magical textures and colours, constantly shifting in nimble rhythms and effortless propulsion.
Even better, the SCO players – gently augmented in piano and percussion departments – were quietly, unassumingly authoritative in this tricksy, deceptively complex music, and just as committed to it as Currie was. Even an interruption from an audience member taken ill – handled with care and compassion by Currie – didn’t put him or the SCO players off their strides.
But this was Steve Reich+, and the “plus” elements before the interval were just as rewarding. The apparently landscape-carving processes of Helen Grime’s powerful River might have seemed a world away from Reich’s tripping syncopations, but his rhythmic vitality had clearly infiltrated her watery evocations, and Currie drew out all the bold colours and craggy details in her sometimes strange and surprising depictions.
He opened with one of the first concertos written for him. Joe Duddell’s captivating and bracingly fresh Snowblind – which Currie played virtually from memory – brought Reichian rhythms to Tippett-style lyricism to beguiling effect, and Currie matched percussive clarity with exquisite shaping. It was a concert of discoveries, and of deep commitment and love. More, please.
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