Scottish Ensemble – review

Queen's Hall, EdinburghIn Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata, a husband murders his wife after hearing her play Beethoven with a stranger: the intensity of their musical connection drives him mad with jealousy. The novella was censored in Russia and inspired Roosevelt to call Tolstoy a pervert, but its elemental passions typically appealed to Leoš Janáček who, in 1924, at the age of 70, used it as the basis of his first string quartet.The music is packed with the folk-rooted rawness and em...

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