Demo of Holden No. 10, a 45 button Crane Duet Concertina

[@rainforest_fiddle]

What a wonderful sound!

[@bilbowaggins3036]

Lovely instrument and playing

[@dianelee2210]

Lovely playing - really shows off the duet concertina.

[@FabiusPyromanus]

Beautiful sound.

[@Springer5]

Great sounding duet. Never heard of Holden concertinas before but that's a beautiful piece of work from the sound of it. Lovely tone. What are the reeds made of?

[@alexholden]

Thanks! The reeds are tempered spring steel held in aluminium alloy frames.

[@Springer5]

@alexholden hi. OK thanks for answering. A very warm sound for steel. Lovely!

[@kaneaccordionist4047]

Nice! I’m working on my own project, which is a 10 button contrabass Anglo concertina going down to C1 (the C right above the lowest note on a piano A0)

[@alexholden]

I did some repair work on Cohen B.K.'s 30 button Lachenal C/G bass Anglo (two octaves below a standard C/G). The bottom notes are kind of ridiculous.

[@alexholden]

BTW if a treble Anglo goes down to C3, a baritone goes down to C2, and a bass goes down to C1; I would expect a contrabass to go to C0.

[@koenvandaele8673]

Exquisite playing that is. I got familiar with concertinas thanks to Roland ‘Roly’ Scales at Château d’Ars, and I’m now on the lookout for buying one that can cover both English/Irish and French traditional music. What would be the best choice? Anglo, Franglo, Duet, English..? I’m starting from scratch, but did play other instruments like the hurdy-gurdy and whistles. Thanks, K

[@alexholden]

This is a very common question without a really good answer. Probably not a Franglo because they are extremely rare. The others all have various advantages and disadvantages. You could do worse than to look at what sort of concertina your favourite players use. Anglo is probably the most common, though some people struggle with different notes on push/pull and the seemingly random arrangement of the third row. English is the second most common but not everyone likes the way you hold them with thumb straps, or the way the scale bounces back and forth across the hands. It's not easy to play simultaneous melody and accompaniment on an English. Duets can be harder to find, and they come in three main types (Maccann, Crane and Hayden) plus several more, each with their own group of proponents.

[@koenvandaele8673]

@@alexholdenI should still thank you for this useful advice. My favorite player is probably Mohsen Amini from ‘Talisk’. I believe he plays Jeffries/Anglo-type concertinas. He’s definitely a virtuoso player, though I can also appreciate (less speedy) delicacy in music, like this player is showing us (What’s his name?). Seems like these Duet-concertinas are very suitable for counterpoint. By the way, ‘The Almond and the Olive’ is a composition by Cliff Stapleton (Hurdy-Gurdy). Anyway, I take off my hat for your high end instruments. Who knows, maybe one day, but gosh, these waiting lists…

[@alexholden]

@@koenvandaele8673 the player in this video is John Thornton. A couple of other Anglo players you might like to check out are John Kirkpatrick and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne.

[@anndodo]

Does anyone know names of the songs?

[@Springer5]

The song titles are displayed on the top left of the screen as each one is played.