Queen’s Hall. Edinburgh, 7 June 2012

CIRCUMSTANCES dictated that I was not able to get to Strathpeffer on Friday evening for the only Highland performance of Savourna Stevenson’s new Concerto for Pedal Harp on Friday.

HAVING travelled north on the very busy A9 I would imagine that the members of the Scottish Ensemble could not have been in the best frame of mind to perform after experiencing the string of hold ups, including yet another tragic accident, this time involving a coach of music fans on their way to RockNess.

Catrin FInch

It seems almost insensitive to turn the clock back twenty-four hours to the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh for the first of the three planned performances by the Scottish Ensemble and the distinguished Welsh harpist, Catrin Finch. The concert was a tribute to the Auld Alliance, with Scottish harpist and composer Savourna Stevenson’s new work being book-ended by French music from Debussy and Ravel, starting with the Ensemble on their own playing Debussy’s Marche ecossaise, which opened with a calm ethereal passage and opened up into a dance theme rather than a march, with copious fiddle technique emphasising the Scots flavour.

Many listeners approach new music with some trepidation, and rightly so, as many young composers seem to be on something of an ego trip involving themselves and the musicians for whom they are composing, leaving the end users, the audience, as merely eavesdroppers trying to decipher what is going on. Not so Savourna Stevenson. Her Concerto for Pedal Harp, commissioned by harp specialists Holywell Music and funded by Creative Scotland, was an absolute pleasure to listen to from start to finish as it transported the audience back across the two centuries since the pedal harp was invented, paying homage to the French and Spanish harpists of Victorian times and more especially to the jazz and film styles of the 1930s and 40s.

Scottish Ensemble photo Joanne Green

This three movement work is so much more than a pastiche of earlier styles. Certainly the first reaction was to think of Hollywood and film soundtracks as wave after wave of melody was developed between the harp and the accompanying strings. To take matters further, at times the Ensemble was delivering the melody, and the harp was providing the commentary. Even the first movement cadenza, so often used by a soloist to showcase their technique, was a reflection on the melodies that had gone before. But the strings and the harp were partners and the conversation between them was exquisitely crafted in a way that only a virtuoso of the instrument could do. It came as no surprise to overhear an interval comment, “Record it, sell it to Classic FM and they could have another Górecki Third Symphony!” Well, Catrin Finch and her husband own a professional recording studio outside Cardiff.

The second half of the concert started with another much loved work by Debussy, his Danses sacrée et profane, a showpiece, and a test piece for the pedal harp and performed with every nuance and touch by Catrin Finch, coaxing immaculate support from Jonathan Morton and the Scottish Ensemble. Continuing the French theme, the concert came to an end with a cornerstone of the Scottish Ensemble’s repertoire, Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement for string orchestra of the wonderful Ravel String Quartet. It is a work that I suspect bears a similarity with Stevenson’s Harp Concerto in that every listening will bring out more and more from the music. I can’t wait for that CD.

© James Munro, 2012

Link

• Scottish Ensemble
• Catrin Finch
• Savourna Stevenson