I hadn't come across Scotland's contemporary music group, the Red Note Ensemble, before hearing them in an excellent concert at last year's Huddersfield festival. Their latest appearance, with a conservative but interestingly chosen programme performed as part of the City of London festival, confirms that they are a very special group of musicians indeed. Performing John Adams's Shaker Loops (in its septet version) they displayed finesse, sensitivity, and – most of all – a level of concentrated energy which caused the music to rip through the air like a rocket burning its way through the Earth's atmosphere.
Which is not to say they crashed and burned: on the contrary, their path along the work's exhilarating emotional trajectory was superbly judged. The first movement's lightly ricocheting figures had a fleetness and joy that reminded me why the piece remains one of Adams's most successful, while the penultimate movement's great rollicking climax brought a sense of deep terror, flecked with knuckle-whitening exhilaration, such as I've never heard in the work before.
The Adams was preceded by Judith Bingham's new concerto for oboe and string ensemble. The piece is subtitled The Angel of Mons, after a legend about the British Expeditionary Force being saved from the advancing German troops by a mysterious angel, and was played with care and exquisite sensitivity to its dark, swirling textures by the ensemble and their soloist, Michal Rogalski. The score held the listener rapt through its eerie dramatic sense as well as its deft evocations of the scenario.
The second half heard Bingham's recent The Hythe – loosely based on The Seafarer and equally skilful in its balancing of natural musical flow with pictorial devices – alongside Barber's Adagio for Strings. Rogalski, a talented young Polish oboist has a diffident stage manner that was no foil for the deep emotions expressed (and evidently felt) in his playing. He returned to conclude with Vaughan Williams's oboe concerto.
• The City of London festival continues until 17 July. Box office: 0845 120 7502.
