Рет қаралды 126
My recording of Erik Chisholm's Scottish Airs. Most of these pieces are based on tunes from Patrick MacDonald’s A Collection of Scottish Airs, published in 1784, a copy of which was given to the composer when he was 10 years old. Unfortunately I could not find any composition dates - the rather crudely typeset score is woefully uninformative on details. It also did not include any of the titles such as there are, I got those from the recordings by Murray McLachlan. The translation from Scottish Gaelic to English (from Google Translate and a listing of the mentioned Patrick MacDonald collection) might not be totally reliable but it is better than nothing.
Learning these pieces was quite a task on account of Chisholm's adventurous harmonic language. It was the most dissonant and experimental music I have recorded since Bartok's Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Songs which were a wee bit of a struggle as well. Nothing in these pieces is ever predictable, and Chisholm's dissonants, strange leaps and intervals are such that one regularly wonders if they are not misprints. For all I know this score may be littered with mistakes but for better or worse I faithfully stuck to it with perhaps only a handful of exceptions. Whatever the case, these pieces are rugged, craggy and quirky, shot through with moments of great beauty. Quintessentially Scottish I would say, in my mind evoking the smell of heather, bog, peat and sheep dung.
Chris Breemer, piano
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0:12 - 1. A bhanarach dhonn a’ chruidh (Brown-haired dairymaid)
0:50 - 2. Ceud soraidh uam do ‘n Ailleagan (A hundred farewells from me to the Allegan)
2:06 - 3. Untitled
3:44 - 4. Untitled
4:19 - 5. ‘S mi air cragan na sgurra (I'm on the edge of the cliff)
5:40 - 6. Ossian an déigh nam Fion (Ossian, the last of his race)
6:52 - 7. Aisling (A Dream)
7:47 - 8. Lamentation for Mac Gregor of Roro
9:07 - 9. Jig
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Recording date: Saturday January 13, 2024
Piano: Kawai Novus NV10S
Setting: SK-EX Rendering
Postprocessing: Concert Hall Light reverb
Art work: David Barnes - The North-east coast of Scotland