Strings worth hearing

To hear three of Britain’s most masterly works for strings - Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia,and Tippett’s Double Concerto - at the Queen’s Hall onTuesday morning will be a special treat. No doubt it has been done before, though I cannot think that I  have ever experienced it, and the combined Scottish and Commonwealth forces who are sharing the programme will be in themselves enough to make  this concert an unique event.

Moreover the posthumous tribute to the great Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe -who died in his eighties a week or two ago - will add to this morning concert’s value, as also, let us hope, will the premiere  of something from New Zealand, Gareth Farr’s Relict Furies for mezzo-soprano and strings, commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival.

All that’s missing, it seems to me, is the tenderness of Elgar’s early Serenade - as well as the crackle of Britten’s Frank Bridge Variations -  though the inclusion of these would result in a concert of improbable length.

The performances,we can be sure, will be technically streamlined and will carry a powerful emotional charge, with Sculthorpe's sonata No 3 as a fiery rarity to remember him by. In other words, don’t miss it.
24 August 2014