Scotland has perhaps more reason than most to feel affinity with Grieg; he was, after all, the descendant of an emigre Scot. There has, though, been little sign of the centenary of the composer's death in the programming of the Scottish orchestras. Instead, the enterprising Mr McFall's Chamber group has organised a Grieg-inspired chamber music mini-series: a trio of concerts that includes the re-creation of the composer's only appearance in Scotland and a programme of music for cello and piano.
The first of these concerts was billed as Grieg with a contemporary twist, but much of it was more conventional than you might expect from this adventurous group of musicians. The McFall's quintet played Grieg's Four Pieces for Strings, and pianist Graeme McNaught performed some of the composer's Lyric pieces. More unusually, the combined forces then performed the unfinished Piano Quintet; only a substantial fragment of the first movement was completed, but it hints at a slow burn building to moments of intensity.
This piece, along with Grieg's unfinished string quartet, is the starting point of James Clapperton's piano quintet Den Som Ingen Ser, the first of two new works on McFall's programme. Fragments of Grieg and Norwegian folksongs play under shifting rhythms on the surface. The result is a multi-textured effect that makes it difficult to grasp what is happening at first, and the piano often seems a little aloof. As a whole, however, it was far more successful than jazz drummer Thomas Stronen's Musique Métrique for percussion, electronics, string trio and double bass, seven pieces that were harmonically bland, electronically unadventurous and far too long.
· At the Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, on Sunday. Box office: 0141-353 8000.
· This article was amended on Wednesday November 14 2007. We were wrong to say in the above review of a concert performed by Mr McFall's Chamber at the Queens (not Queen's) Hall, Edinburgh that the Grieg 100 mini-festival, a trio of concerts inspired by Grieg, is organised by Mr McFall's Chamber. The series is organised by Bows Art Classical Music Management; Mr McFall's Chamber was involved in only the first of the three concerts. The error occurred in the editing process. The first error (Queens not Queen's) has been corrected.