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Reviewer: Julie Anne Sadie Savall pays homage once again to the musical traditions of Scotland and Ireland
In this sequel to their 2009 recording Savall and Andrew Lawrence-King are joined by Frank McGuire, bodhrán (Irish frame drumm) maker and p1ayer. The repertoire is a mixture of traditional Irish and Scottish folk music with some tunes published or dating from the l8th to 2Oth centuries. Savall has grouped ‘them into sets, each a suite of dances and character pieces, and each performed in a single key at modern pitch. Based on simple monophonic tunes, some are lusty, others — like Charlie Hunter’s “The Hills of Lorne” and James Scott Skinner’s gentle tribute to his wife — are hauntingly beautiful, piqued as in O’Carolan’s “Planxty Sir Ulick Burke” with unforeseen chromatic turns, then on repetition varied with improvisation involving ornaments, melodic diminution, pedals, chords, syncopation and of instrumentation, tempo and dynamics. The perfomers ensure that the hornpipes, jigs and reels are bursting with vitaIity and swagger, the strathspey is measured, and the ballads, planxties and laments — like that of Nathaniel Gow — are eloquently understated. Savall has traded the fiddle on the previous disc for a deeper-voiced, flexibly tuned lyra viol while retaining the treble viol in the outer sets. Lawrence-King alternates between two harps and a psaltery, providing a rich variety of accompaniments (subtle drones, resonant bell-like chords and nimble counterpoint) as well as solo turns. McGuire neatly underscores and complements the energy inherent in the tunes. In the
booklet Savall writes again “in praise of transmission”, this time tracing the
ways in which a renewed interest in traditional folk music during the late 20th
century found fresh expression in syncretic forms in which Celtic folk music was
transformed à la Riverdance into something apparently “modem” and
self-evidently “marketable”. |
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