Many, many world-class ensembles have graced the stage in the Perth Festival’s 50-odd years, but one has eluded the organisers until this year – the Hebrides Ensemble. It’s a fluent group, rarely the same from concert to concert and drawing from an A-list of the country’s top musicians. On Thursday night, in St John’s Kirk, we were treated to music from a magnificent seven, under the leadership of artistic director Will Conway.

They are leading performers of contemporary music, and their programme reflected that. However, it needed a balance with music of a less abrasive, less atonic kind and I think they got that just right. Under the banner Auld Alliance, there was music from Scotland and France with Beamish, Weir and Lyell Cresswell (a New Zealander but with strong Scots connections) pitting their wits against the Galic foursome of Debussy, Francaix, Messiaen and Ravel. In my mind, the latter came out on top, their music providing a melodic and harmonic warmth and togetherness their counterparts couldn’t provide.

Weir’s Bagpipers String Trio was rather stark and any melody from Cresswell’s Variations on a Theme by Charles Ives didn’t really materialise unto the final variation, despite flautist Katherine Bryan’s rich, round tone. Contrast those with movements from Francaix’ clarinet quintet and Debussy’s Danse sacre et dance profane and the divide was quite palpable.

By way of contradicting myself, I enjoyed Sally Beamish’s Between Earth and Sea, written for the quite unusual combination of flute, harp and viola. Yann Ghiro (clarinet) gave a magnificent solo performance of a movement from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time – this was more like a huge extended cadenza – before Ravel’s wonderful Introduction and Allegro, which involved all seven musicians, brought the concert to a close.

I guess that for newcomers to the Hebrides way of thinking and their aim to champion the music of contemporary composers, not just Scots, some of the programme might have been hard to fathom out. I might have preferred the evening’s French connection, but I have to take my hat off for the masterful way they highlighted the world of modern Scots music. If anyone is going to help me appreciate it more, it’s the Hebrides Ensemble. And they’ll do it with lots of style and lots of skill.