Music review: Colin Currie & the Scottish Ensemble, Cumnock Town Hall

IT’S good to get the audience involved and that’s exactly what Jonathan Morton, director of the Scottish Ensemble, did in this opening concert of the 4th annual Cumnock Tryst Festival. “There’s a “C” that drones all the way through Purcell’s quirky Fantasia on One Note”, he told us. “Do hum along.” The capacity crowd obliged, embracing it like a ritualistic Zen moment. It was part of an intended uninterrupted sequence of short pieces filling the majority of the first half: a cocktail of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Debussy, Tippett, Purcell and Fauré, rolled out like a random iPod shuffle, which could have done with fewer hiatuses between works to have fully achieved the desired effect.