JENNIE MACFIE enjoys an immersion in high class music to round out Cromarty’s harp weekend.

POUND for pound, Cromarty must have one of the highest supply of arts per capita in the country, if not the world. On Saturday, residents could choose between the Black Isle Words Festival ceilidh and The Harpers’ Concert, part of Cromarty Arts Trust’s Harp Village (and a Blas Festival Fringe event), the time of which was adjusted to allow for the Cromarty & Resolis Film Society’s screening of The House of Usher an hour earlier. All this in a village with a population of around 720.

The House of Usher consisted of two early silent films with live musical accompaniment by the Southwell Collective, the first an engaging surrealist fantasy called Ghosts Before Breakfast, whose flying bowler hats would have amused Rene Magritte.

The Fall of the House of Usher, with French intertitles and an English voiceover, was stronger stuff and, as Roderick Usher descended into his final madness to an increasingly dissonant accompaniment, the effect was, it must be said, fairly harrowing.

Corrina Hewat

It took a little while for harrowed ears to relax into the melodious harp-playing at The Stables. The concert featured a glittering constellation of harpers – Mary Macmaster, Corrina Hewat, Heather Yule, Laoise Kelly from Ireland and Tristan le Govic from Brittany, their varied clarsachs drawn up on the stage like so many ships’ prows at anchor in harbour.

One might be forgiven for thinking that an entire evening of harping might tend to be somewhat repetitive, but what this concert demonstrated so delightfully was the harp’s range. The bass notes, played with the left hand, can go so low that a powerful strum makes the floor vibrate, while the high treble right hand work can trill and sparkle as much as the finest fiddle.

Notes can be left hanging or damped with a hand or finger in the same way that piano pedals alter the notes but with much finer, string-by-string control – the harp’s repertoire of tones and textures is so much more than the classic glissando. In the hands of a good player it’s an instrument of astonishing power and beauty.

And these were not just good players, but five of the best. Mary Macmaster’s glorious Gaelic songs, Laoise (pronounced ‘Leesha’) Kelly’s sprightly dance tunes, Heather Yule’s spellbinding storytelling, Corrina Hewat’s lovely songs, and Tristan le Govic’s Breton dance tunes – and Breton dancing – all enchanted the audience, many of whom were there for the weekend’s extensive range of workshops and classes for everyone from complete beginners to advanced players. Let’s hope the Harp Village returns next year. It’s a good deed in a weary world.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Cromarty Arts Trust
• Jennie Macfie