“Music needs great communicators, and here’s one whose captivating instrumental voice could open up a new world.” So says Classic FM, but with regard to whom or to what?
The saxophone, that’s what, and a Caird hall audience will have a chance to form their own opinion tonight when Classical BRIT-winning saxophonist Amy Dickson makes her debut with the Scottish Ensemble, at the start of their first tour of 2015.
Amy will perform Glazunov’s E flat Concerto along with Night Prayers, by Giya Kancheli. The former is a virtuosic, lyrical showpiece ideal for a player of Amy’s talent, while the latter suggested by Amy to SE artistic director Jonathan Morton is the last of a four-sectioned cycle that is a bleak mediation on religion and its traditions.
The repertoire for classical saxophone is limited but if anyone can highlight its charms its Amy, through her virtuosic playing and highly individual style. Her CV is impressive. She performed her fist concerto aged 16, has won awards and competitions that no other saxophonist has won before and continues to commission new works to highlight the importance of the saxophone in a classical context.
The Caird Hall programme is an all-Russian affair, with the Ensemble weighing in with two works that they could almost call their own Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Barshai’s arrangement of Shostakovich’s C minor Chamber Symphony.
www.scottishensemble.co.uk
Caird Hall, Dundee, 7.30pm tonight