This crack string ensemble boasts players of a high order, their precision and polished sound very much evident in every aspect of the closing concert of this year’s Cheltenham music festival. Crisscrossing both centuries and continents in a programme with the natural world as its theme, different compositional treatments of the four seasons offered a connecting thread. And, yes, that immediately spells Vivaldi, though not as you’d assume.
It’s common practice for new commissions to be partner pieces to particular pieces in the repertoire, but Anna Meredith’s 2016 piece for the Scottish Ensemble Anno took elements of Vivaldi’s four ultra-familiar concertos and created a sequence of 16 movements, interpolating her own distinctive blend of acoustic and surround electronics. While the original composition featured coordinated visuals by Meredith’s sister Eleanor, here Cheltenham’s Town Hall stage had a back wall of greenery, decorously arranged on the raked seating behind the players, with lighting used to atmospheric effect.
