Old made new
The last time I met James Waters, it was on board Concorde.
To be fair, it was stationary and in the confines of the National Museum of Flight but still an unusual setting for a musical premiere as part of the Lammermuir Festival, which he co-directs.
This week he was presiding over another unusual premiere. The venue - Perth Concert Hall - is ordinary enough but the piece, a concerto by Vivaldi, hasn't been heard for the best part of 250 years, if at all.
Among those listening in to rehearsals of Il Gran Mogol, is musicologist Andrew Woolley, from the University of Southampton, who stumbled across the score while researching another matter in the National Archives of Scotland.
Il Gran Mogol - one of a quartet of short, national concertos, all believed to be missing - was filed away among the papers of the Marquesses of Bute.
Softly spoken Mr Woolley is modest about his find.
Grand tour
"I'm a huge fan of Vivaldi and I knew it was something very special - but it was really a case of asking the right question - was it known?" he asked.
The answer was that the piece wasn't known, at least in recent years.
It's believed to have been brought to Scotland by the son of the third Marquis of Lothian, who, as noblemen did in those days, went on a grand tour of Europe and brought home the concerto as a souvenir.
As a keen flautist, there's every chance he played it, but no mention of any public performance before Lord Robert Kerr died on the battlefield at Culloden and the concerto disappeared into piles of family papers.
There was of course huge excitement about the discovery. Adrian Chandler, who leads the early music ensemble La Serenissima, says it's comparable with the discovery of Vivaldi's sacred work Dixit Dominus in a German archive in 2005. But how would it sound?
New album
Concert goers in Perth got the chance to find out when La Serenissima performed its 21st century premiere last night.
It's short - just seven or eight minutes long - and quite recognisably Vivaldi.
Given its theme - there are further geographical tributes to France, Spain and England - it could have been something of a novelty piece but it's not. It's unsurprising but lyrical - and from a historical point of view, fascinating to hear.
La Serenissima plan to record it after their short tour, and release it on their next album so if you didn't make it to Perth, there's still a chance to hear it.
Not London’s South Bank, but the south bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow - every bit as lively in cultural terms as its namesake. I’m Pauline McLean, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland’s arts correspondent, and I’ll be blogging here about arts events and issues happening across the country.
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