Season 2013–2014
Saturday 12 October 2013
Kemnay Church Centre
Saturday 23 November 2013
St Mary's Church, Inverurie
Saturday 15 March 2014
Acorn Centre, Inverurie
Friday 11 April 2014
Inverurie Town Hall
This concert is promoted by Inverurie Music in association with Surround-Sound,
a listing of new music events in North-East Scotland throughout the year.
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Delmege Quartet
Thomas Aldren (violin) Kirsty Lovie (violin) Elizabeth Boyce (viola) Hannah Innes (cello)
Saturday 15 March 2014
8pm
Acorn Centre, Inverurie
(map)
Tickets £12.00, £9.00 (concession), £1.00 (children & full-time
students)
available at the door or from Morgan's Music Shop
Original listing
Review by Alistair Massey
On Saturday evening, the Delmege Quartet gave a stirring performance that thrilled
the audience in the crystal-clear acoustics of the Acorn Centre. Two of the players
have family connections with Aberdeenshire, and on their third tour of the district,
this was their first performance in Inverurie.
The musicians are final year students at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal
College of Music in London. They originally met at the National Youth Orchestra
of Great Britain in 2008 and formed as a string quartet in 2011. The late John Delmege,
who gave them their name, was a chamber music enthusiast whose family provided the
quartet with a scholarship to study with the Maggini Quartet. Only last month, the
Delmege Quartet won first prize at the York Chamber Music Competition.
The concert was given in the memory of Gavin Greig, a local "lad o pairts" who was
distantly related to Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian composer. He is chiefly known today
for the monumental folk song collection of over three thousand folk songs that was
collected from Aberdeenshire singers in collaboration with his friend and tutor,
the Rev. James Bruce Duncan. He was also a poet, playwright, novelist, conductor,
musician and "Dominie" of Whitehill School near New Deer. He campaigned to have
music in the Scottish school curriculum. Coming from an ordinary background, he
gained scholarships and, after his MA degree, trained for the Free Church ministry,
but gave it up and married his childhood sweetheart, Isabella Burgess, by whom he
had nine children. He died in 1914.
The performance included quartets by Mozart and Brahms. In a captivating display
of balance and lyricism, the Quartet gave new breath to these fine works. Their
"togetherness" did not stop interesting features of the Mozart Quartet in D Minor
emerging from the musical woodwork, such as the gently articulated triplets in the
viola part. The Brahms String Quartet No. 3 in B flat major also upstaged the viola
in good measure with its robust melodies, fiery interludes and swirls of folk dances.
The quartet showed off Brahms as a master of contrast and texture with the violins'
sensitively caressed themes and the gently throbbing cross-rhythms of the cello.
John Hearne's In Search of Strathspey was given its first performance. The
composer described it as a "whimsical comment on the cross-over between classical
and folk styles". The dark opening in the lower strings gradually gave vent to a
wilder tune with its raucous accompaniment. It was a tribute to Scott Skinner, the
"Strathspey King" and the fiddle music edited by Gavin Greig. Before the composition
was played, Kirsty Lovie, who is a native of Huntly, got the audience in the mood,
entertaining them with an impromptu medley of fiddle tunes by Niel Gow and Scott
Skinner.
The composition was premiered by Inverurie Music with financial support from Aberdeenshire
Council through the "Be Part of the Picture" scheme. A display about the Greig-Duncan
Folk Song Collection and a collection of fiddle music was also provided for the
society with help from David Catto, local historian, and Aberdeenshire Library Service,
showing the enormous treasure chest that is Aberdeenshire's musical heritage.
The next concert by Inverurie Music will be Camerata Ritmata with a world music/jazz
fusion of style on Friday 11 April in Inverurie Town Hall at 8pm.
Photos by Alistair Massey
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