Fiddle, harp and voice (page 100)
Drams
Music Scottish traditional music
Musicians Isobel Mieras (clarsach) and Jim Henderson (fiddle)
Venue St Andrew's and St George's Church (Venue 111)
Address 13 George Street
Reviewer Pat Napier

St Andrew's & St George's Church © Pat Napier

In a delighful complement to Isobel Mieras' solo recital last week in the Magdalen Chapel. she joined forces with Jim Henderson to give their audience another loving tour around the rich heritage of Scottish traditional music. Where, last week, she spread out her own personal musical joys, this week it was a tour around the fiddle, piping and clarsach music and much of it was largely unknown.

It was a beautifully choreographed concert opening with the stately, brooding Dunottar Castle which flowed into a strathspey, the Laird of Drumblair and ending this first set with its companion piece the reel Angus Campbell. The next group was a pair Burns' lesser known songs The winter it is past and To the weaver's gin ye go, the first revealing the Scottish penchant for thoroughly miserable songs and the second a cautionary tale of illicit llove.

And so the music and song unfolded through this well-tried, successful formula which revealed insights into a now lost way of life in rural Scotland, with much of the music and related way of life spinning out of the Jacobite Risings of the 1740s. From James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd) came the hauntingly beautiful story of Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape in The twa bonnie maidens and Lady Nairne's atmospheric song The auld house, her lament for her childhood home's dereliction following her grandparents' sheltering of the Prince on the run.

Then, as Scotland moved on from these terrible times and Scots became more confident and less gloomy, the mid 18th century music became both cultured, salon, refined airs and the more energetic, free, unrestrained dance music that was the strathspey and reel genre, still so loved today. These reels and strathspeys were spun out by Jim Henderson's lovely warm fiddle, sometimes light and lilting, sometimes dizzyingly fast, sometimes melancholy.

Vivid insights into Scottish life were glimpsed in songs such as The band of shearers. No, not sheep shearers but corn shearers, an annual community event engendering much social activity as well as hard work. Then coming more up to date, Jim Henderson's fiddle translated the lovely pipe tribute to the much-loved Fr John McMillan of Barra and Isobel Mieras told the story of her friend Tom Matthews, piper to the Duke of Northumberland, who died last year and why she linked her composition to The cockle gatherers. It was he who explained why that tune is so jaunty and jumpy - a tale from seeing actual cockle pickers working and talking to them afterwards.

In all, a delightful concert offering many new pleasures from a duo who have a great rapport and who mix humour, stories and enthralling music. The songs were all fascinating, though Isobel Mieras' voice seemed a little light and uncertain in this larger acoustic and space than in the Magdalen Chapel's warm, intimate atmosphere. Everybody went out smiling and satisfied: the tourists enthralled by hearing the Scots softly singing the encore Will ye no' come back again along with her, the home audience with having heard such varied and memorable fiddle, harp and voice music.

© Pat Napier 19 August 2004. Published on www.edinburghguide.co.uk

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