Music review: 12 Ensemble at Midsummer on Midsummer Day🔥🔥

The London-based string ensemble definitely won new fans following their sole performace at Cork Midsummer Festival at the Opera House.

Lead violinist Eloisa-Fleur Thom on stage at the Opera House with the 12 Ensemble. Credit: Jed Niezgoda.

And so, a week after Happy Days opened and concluded its run at the Opera House, I found myself back on the balcony on another hot and rainy day for London-based 12 Ensemble's sole performance during Cork Midsummer.

This was a short but soaring show that clocked in bang on the hour mark, combining the music of Vivaldi and Max Richter, the German-born British composer.

You all know Vivaldi, or rather his music: it’s frantic, sublime, used in a thousand car ads. There’s every chance too you know the music of Max Richter: he’s scored music for everything from Jiro Dreams of Sushi to Waltz with Bashir.

When Richter reworked Vivaldi’s Four Seasons over a decade ago, he explained to The Guardian why: "The Four Seasons is something we all carry around with us." 

"It's just everywhere. In a way, we stop being able to hear it. So this project is about reclaiming this music for me personally, by getting inside it and rediscovering it for myself – and taking a new path through a well-known landscape."

The 12 Ensemble - with 22 members on stage in Cork - is an unconducted string ensemble that has collaborated extensively. For their Cork show, they were led by violinist Eloisa-Fleur Thom. With the exception of the final performance of "On the Nature of Daylight," Thom stole the limelight as the musicians seamlessly sped through, slowed down, and intertwined sequences of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. These sequences had been chopped up, rearranged, and recomposed through Richter's lens.

At times, the experience felt too brief, while at other times, the reworking was sublime, and the performance captivating. Throughout it all, Thom and the Ensemble were incredible.

All 22 of the London-based 12 Ensemble. Credit: Jed Niezgoda.

All good things have to end, and when it did it came too quickly. The 12 Ensemble ditched Vivaldi, this time playing out with arguably Richter’s most famous composition, On the Nature of Daylight, an overly wrought title for a music score you’ll wrack your brains to recall where you heard it. The answer? Everywhere.

Daylight is used in films such as Arrival, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, and possibly an episode of Eastenders. In that sense it’s very much a crowd pleaser, but it’s also a sweeping, melancholic and beautiful composition made equally for the cello and the violin. 

While it might have been an odd choice as an encore, in a sense a composition about daylight on the longest day of the year was apt. It was a performance the audience wanted to stretch on and some. The 12 Ensemble were one of the highlights of Midsummer. Come back again. Stay longer, play longer.

Thom’s virtuoso performance and the incredible music from the entire chamber orchestra was my highlight of Midsummer, and it just so happened it all played out on Midsummer Day. 

A sublime performance. Credit: Jed Niezgoda

Cork Midsummer Festival 2023 runs until Sunday June 25. More information on shows and events here.

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