Glasgow Green, 8 September 2007

Rick Taylor.

AS THE SAME sunny Saturday that had earlier witnessed Scotland beating Lithuania darkened towards evening, a peaceful army of some 20,000 marched on Glasgow Green, amply kitted out with folding chairs, picnics, blankets and Saltires, for the annual free mini-festival that is Proms in the Park.

This year’s programme took on an extra tartan hue, not only as part of the BBC’s Scotland’s Music 07 initiative, but also as part of the Highland 2007 festivities via a live big-screen link-up with Cawdor Castle, near Nairn, where an audience of 600 enjoyed the show in the grounds.

Aptly enough, then, it was Skye’s Peatbog Faeries – backed by the full might of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – who won the night’s loudest and longest cheers, briefly wresting the mood of the evening from genteel classical gathering towards an alfresco Celtic rave.

The vibrant colours and textures of the band’s multi-layered sound had been expertly expanded into orchestral arrangements by trombonist Rick Taylor, commandingly led from the front by Adam Sutherland’s fiddle and Peter Morrison’s pipes, and powered along by snappy, authoritative grooves and massive beefy basslines from Iain Copeland and Innes Hutton.

The appearance of John Kenny and his reconstructed Carnyx, the ancient and aggressively unmelodious boar-headed Celtic war horn, proved less of a hit, both solo and in a specially-commissioned trio piece, Balvenie Castle, also featuring French horn and trumpet. Intriguing historical artefact the instrument may be: musical it’s not.

More crowd-pleasing items included an extract from George McIlwham’s patriotic suite ‘Alba’, featuring its veteran author alongside Iain MacInnes on bagpipes with full orchestra, and a finale that opened with the perennially popular strains of ‘Highland Cathedral’, before Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ cued the climactic fireworks and cannons, rescuing the show from the tediously elaborate business of live link-ups with other Proms sites around the UK: great for the TV, perhaps, but less so for those on the ground.

Outwith the Scottish-themed content, the evening’s star attractions lent plenty of international glitter to the proceedings. The brilliant Samoan bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu delighted the crowd with his majestic, vividly articulated richness and lyricism, opening with the luxuriant measures of Mozart’s ‘Non Pui Andrai’, from ‘The Marriage of Figaro’, before perfectly distilling the mood in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening’.

After a stirringly potent rendition of a traditional New Zealand carol, ‘Te Harinui’ (‘With Great Joy’), he finished in engagingly impish style with Gershwin’s ‘I Got Plenty of Nuthin’’, later returning triumphally to lead the masses in the traditional closing chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

Also in the first half, cellist Julian Lloyd Webber served up a similarly varied selection, contrasting the graceful melodies and haunting soulfulness of Bach’s ‘Adagio in G’ and Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Swan’ with the tricksy voltes-faces of Frank Bridge’s ‘Scherzetto’.

His final number, brother Andrew’s ‘Variations 1-4’ – originally written for cello and rock band, and familiar as the theme tune for the South Bank Show – was a less fortunate choice, the orchestral arrangement highlighting the music’s clunky limitations.

© Sue Wilson, 2007