London's Kings Place is deep into its ‘Scotland Unwrapped’ season and this latest instalment was curated by Donald Grant, a violinist and fiddler steeped in Highland culture. Together with the strings of Aurora Orchestra, Grant had around him a band consisting of guitar (Innes White), piano (Tom Gibbs), double bass (Euan Burton), flute and uillean pipes (Ryan Murphy), plus a singer (Mischa MacPherson) – quite a line-up! Grant assembled a 90-minute mix-tape of eleven items combining six traditional pieces arranged by him, interweaved with five original works, three of which were his own. So this was really the Donald Grant Show, and he set the tone for the whole of the programme which here and there smouldered and crackled but ultimately failed to burst into life.
The arrangements of the traditional pieces might easily have been prepared for the soundtrack to a promotional film about the Highlands. One could picture the landscape being overflown by a drone, swooping over the folds of the land of the mountain and the flood. There could have been the eerie sight of ruined castles and at least one loch, glowing with the light of the setting sun, that might be sheltering a long-necked beastie. In these pieces, MacPherson seem to struggle with maintaining her line and her voice seemed to be a little frayed at the edges. The ensemble playing was up to the task of describing the landscape, with sharp accents and clean melodic lines, but it lacked the edginess which would have described the dangers of the elemental forces to which all forms of life in the Highlands are constantly exposed.
Something of those elemental forces surfaced in David Fennessy’s Hirta Rounds, a piece written for string orchestra about one of the remote islands of the remote St Kilda archipelago. However, despite tight playing from Aurora, the material all too easily dissolved into the kitschy sound of an audio postcard. Ailie Robertson’s string trio The Black Pearl tried to capture some of the lustre of the G minor movements of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but it was its ragged quality which stood out; it was indeed the stand-out piece on the programme.
The centrepiece of the set, and the main disappointment of the evening, was the world premiere of Grant’s Thuit an Oichche Oirnm (The Night Overtook Us). It was apparently inspired by an account of one of the ferocious storms for which the Highlands are famous, in which cattle, sheep, shepherds and their dogs died “under yards of drift”. As noted in the programme, and narrated by Grant, “one man died 20 yards from his own door; another was found frozen stiff between two rocks, a dog at each hand.” With such a harrowing tale and its vivid images I expected something deep and mournful, with themes thickly encrusted with ice and harmonies dragging me into the drift. What I heard was a series of sounds undifferentiated from most of the other sounds previously served up and would hear again as the programme staggered through its routine.
Perhaps there were simply too many items on this programme for it to gel into a satisfying whole. Grant is clearly an adventurous performer and curator, and his passion for the history and distinctive culture of the Highland homeland is a source of deep passion, which is evident from his playing. Alas, on this occasion he and his collaborators were simply overtaken by the night.
