Concerto Caledonia

Revenge of the Folksingers

Folksong is a subversive art, the caustic wit of the deprived. This album subverts the varied British genres, though not by subjecting them to radical politics or wilful distortion. This is a much more subtle process on traditional instruments, altering existing arrangements to take the ear by surprise with unexpected conjunctions. The opening number, Foggy, foggy dew, exemplifies the acuity of this improvisatory approach. A song that is usually droned in smoky dens opens with a pluck of what I think is a nyckelharpa [it's a dulcitone - Ed.], stating the singing widower’s solitude before other instruments add dimensions, dark and light, to his lament. The Salley Gardens takes sarcastic liberties with Benjamin Britten’s famous arrangement, listing bray harp and dulcitone in its instrumentarium. The third track, Bonnie Susie Cleland, is unbearably tragic yet delivered deadpan, as if tragedy is innate to Scottish life. The performers are members of Concerto Caledonia and the voices are pitched to perfection, midway between rough trade and concert flourish. Track by track, the album exerts an ever more insistent traction. The recording was made in Aldeburgh, the morning after a concert residency. Any background noise you might hear must be the ghost of Peter Pears. Best record of the summer, so far. _{Norman Lebrecht, La Scena musicale} One of the most interesting albums, I think, of the last 12 months _{Mike Harding, BBC Radio 2} Bridging the gap between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture – a gap previously filled by the likes of Anthems in Eden, the 1969 album by Shirley and Dolly Collins with David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London or Philip Pickett’s work with The Albion Band – Revenge Of The Folksingers marks an inspired collaborative meeting of minds between the Scottish early music group Concerto Caledonia, under the direction of David McGuinness, and folk music innovators Alasdair Roberts, Olivia Chaney, Jim Moray and Mairi Campbell. A weeks’ residency in Snape gave those involved the opportunity to explore common ground, before recording; working from scratch on both traditional and original songs and tunes from Scotland, as well as drawing on Britten’s folksong arrangements found in Aldeburgh’s library. The results are richly textured, free-spirited, light of touch and joyously eclectic. Musically, the wealth of talent is unquestionable: subtle layers, gentle brilliance. The production glows with warmth. Repertoire ranges from spruced-up old familiars to heavyweight newcomers. All the standards are given a vigorous shake out in the fresh air: The Foggy Dew is imbued with torch-song elegance by Moray; The Salley Gardens is made snowflake-fragile by Mairi Campbell’s vocal and Bonnie Susie Clelland is rendered gut-wrenchingly painful in tender duet between Alasdair Roberts and Olivia Chaney. Then, from the leftfield, comes Ivor Cutler’s quaint OK, I’ll Count To 8 ‘mashed up’ with the intro to Britten’s O Waly Waly. And still then, some staggeringly good original songs. Roberts’ gloriously gothic lyricism shines in his ‘song of metaphysical enquiry’ The Sacred Nine & The Primal Horde. And Olivia Chaney has the Midas touch, both as vocalist and as a songwriter of substance: songs of denial (!) Swimming In The Longest River or of Levi Stubbs’ Tears humanity in Daddy Oh, I’m Hoovering. Beautiful. _{fRoots - November 2011} Wilfully provocative as the title may be, it’s not entirely fatuous, perhaps a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the mutual suspicion that tends to lurk in the great divide between folk song and art music. While various celebrated composers – Benjamin Britten, George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams among them – drew prodigiously on English folk song and helped to put it back into circulation in the process, the spiritual chasm between musicians who follow the dots and those who play instinctively tends to be a gaping one. With some success, Dolly Collins notably attempted to knit these two opposing cultural mindsets in the 1960s with both her sister Shirley and David Munrow’s Early Music Consort, but the camps have rarely met since. All of which only adds fuel to this intriguing experiment. Previously applying free-thinking early music elegance to everything from Robert Burns to Frank Zappa, Astor Piazzolla and the Buzzcocks, Concerto Caledonia – under the direction of David McGuinness – now turn their attention to the folk tradition. Co-opting four of the brightest young guns in the new folk army – Jim Moray, Alasdair Roberts, Olivia Chaney and Mairi Campbell – they decamped to Suffolk for a week to revive and reclaim an alliance between folk music and classic instruments and arrangements. Mostly it works, too. Hearteningly free of the clichéd stylisation often associated with both corners, it encompasses enlightened treatments of some well-worn warhorses like The Foggy Dew, The Salley Gardens and Lincolnshire Poacher alongside fresh self-written material and the occasional enticing curve ball such as the Roberts/Chaney duet OK, I’ll Count to 8, which entertainingly marries an Ivor Cutler ditty to the intro of Britten’s O Waly Waly. It’s an album that certainly marks the blossoming of the classically trained Chaney, who’s fully embraced folk music to emerge not only as an outstanding singer but an exceptional songwriter. Sung with appealing vulnerability over measured string accompaniment, her Daddy Oh, I’m Hoovering is a heartrending study of kitchen sink desolation, and her even starker The King’s Horses, which closes the album, confirms her arrival as a major talent. Oddness abounds, but the revenge is very sweet. _{Colin Irwin, BBC Music} It's a dangerous thing to categorise Concerto Caledonia, whose loose make-up of personnel allows it to cross musical borders with an ease of conscience that is always refreshing, and occasionally a shade anarchic. Classical or traditional? This CD - a result of a residency last winter in the isolated charm of Aldeburgh - is an enigmatic as the title suggests. Artistic director David McGuinness explains a process that saw him draw together his "17th-century dance band", vocals included, take a cursory look at Aldeburgh legend Benjamin Britten's folk song arrangements, toss them aside (apart from The Salley Gardens, rearranged for the disc) and come up with arrangements of their own - from settings of Burns to Hamish Henderson and featured singer Olivia Chaney - as well as traditional pavans and galliards peppered with tinkling orchestrations. It's well-tempered fun, as you'd expect from McGuinness and his wacky pals. _{The Scotsman} This CD is the result of an unusual collaboration and residency. The folk musicians Alasdair Roberts, Mairi Campbell, Olivia Chaney and Jim Moray met the early-music group Concerto Caledonia for a week of improvising, surrounded by "volumes of Benjamin Britten's folksong settings". The entire CD was recorded in a day at the end. The material ranges from traditional to newly written, with some less than reverential nods to Britten. The harp-heavy arrangements sometimes veer close to all-purpose Celtic doodling; elsewhere there is a real sense of different traditions finding common ground. _{The Times} From settings of Burns to Hamish Henderson, this arresting collaboration unites period instrument specialists and some of the leading lights on the UK folk scene to explore each others homelands and the disputed borders in between with enthralling and occasionally raucous results. In the notes, Concerto Caledonia leader David McGuinness refers to "reclaiming some traditional songs from recital room culture" which is where the Revenge of the Folksingers title comes from. So what you get in this repertoire is a combination of the early music instruments and Scottish compositions - it's great! _{footstompin.com}

Lion

Nestling within this disc, primarily of Scots-accented baroque repertoire - all as exquisitely played as we have come to expect - lurks the recording of the year. David McGuinness's group, augmented by flautist Chris Norman, performs the Buzzcocks' Boredom with soprano Lisa Milne as lead vocalist. Thirty years on from the Spiral Scratch EP, she sings it in her own Aberdonian accent and with the ennui Howard Devoto and Peter Shelley could only aspire to. Everyone should own this disc. Other fine tracks include a reworking of Daniel Johnston's Walking the Cow and Astor Piazzolla's exquisite Coral._{The Herald}

The Red Red Rose

the funkiest album of Burns songs I've ever heard_{CD Review - BBC Radio 3} playing of the highest order_{Early Music Review} If you missed this January 2005 dazzler on its first release, then this brand new, digitally remastered version of David McGuinness's brilliant collection of songs and tunes from 18th-century Scotland should be snapped up. And if you haven't heard it, and think you know a deal aboot our native culture, be prepared to be surprised by the reams of insights, wicked and witty, humorous and heartbreaking, exhilarating and energetic on offer from McGuinness and his leftfield outfit, which includes gleaming soprano Mhairi Lawson and the raw and exciting fiddle playing of David Greenberg. Fresh, vivid, and sparkling throughout._{The Herald} This new release is another exciting example of the arty side of Scots music prevalent in Edinburgh around the time Burns was active in the capital. The singers are Mhairi Lawson and Jamie MacDougall; the performance, backed by David McGuinness's Concerto Caledonia, is svelte and stylish. _{The Scotsman} Supreme playing and singing, and a strong sense of levity. Concerto Caledonia obviously take their music seriously, but not so themselves - there's passion and perfection here, but no pomposity. _{musicscotland.com}

Fiddler Tam

Spirited performances by Concerto Caledonia; I can't stop playing this delightful disc._{The Times} This CD offers a tremendous amount of pleasure, and it’s difficult to know how much to attribute this to Kellie’s talent and how much to assign to the verve and conviction of Concerto Caledonia. This crack ensemble makes the best possible case for Kellie’s music, and one hopes, probably in vain, for a second volume. John Purser’s liner notes for this disc are first-rate, as is the recorded sound, fine in CD format, and marvelously natural and unpretentious as a multichannel SACD; the instruments all have a strong presence and just the right amount of space around them. This music is by no means profound, but it is supremely entertaining, and delivered with aplomb. _Fanfare The Earl of Kellie must be one of 18th-century Scotland's - and indeed Britain's - best-kept musical secrets. Listening to his Overture in C (effectively a three-movement symphony), it is almost impossible to believe that this strikingly energetic and eloquent music can really be the work of an almost-forgotten (and notoriously rakish) noble dilettante. As a pupil of Johann Stamitz, Kellie was unusually well trained for an aristocratic amateur. Both the C major Overture and its companion in B flat are richly inventive and imaginative, abounding in the dramatic gestures beloved of the Mannheim school and in the nervous agitation and melancholy minor-key expressiveness of the fashionable Sturm und Drang style. It is easy to understand the latter work's great popularity not only in Britain but as far afield as Jamaica and St Petersburg. Concerto Caledonia's spirited, stylish performances do full justice to a delightful programme, which, in ranging from charming Haydnesque trios to a rollicking strathspey and reel, displays Kellie's exceptional talent and versatile musical personality. _{Sunday Telegraph} The excellent Concerto Caledonia devote this latest recording to the music of Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie or "fiddler Tam" as the 18th century student of Stamitz and the Mannheim style, contemporary of Haydn and Boswell, and rabble rouser of some repute, was endearingly known to his close associates. Concerto Caledonia, directed by harpsichordist David McGuinness, play with great style, understanding and fervour, for this is music which exudes an energy, sparkle and enthusiasm that could indeed suggest the Scottish origins of the Fiddler Tam soubriquet. The symphonic Overture in C with its catchy rhythms, and the cheerful drive of the theatre piece, Maid of the Mill, are examples of a (then) new, exciting style which Kellie introduced to Britain, while the delightful three-movement Quartet in A is the outstanding piece on the disc. Soprano Mhairi Lawson adds sensitive, silvery-voiced readings of a short concert aria and the composer's only song. Concerto Caledonia has done a wonderful job making available this distinctive, but rarely heard, musical voice of Scotland. _{Sunday Herald} David McGuinness and his ensemble Concerto Caledonia have built a notable reputation for bringing historically important early music back into circulation, and doing it with as much a sense of danger as of style. The emphasis is on style in this fascinating cross section of works by the 18th-century composer and colourful Scots aristocrat, Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie. His studies in Germany introduced Erskine to the famous Mannheim school, in particular Stamitz, and that influence comes over loud and clear in the dramatic style of overture and quartet contained in this highly enjoyable disc. Songs (featuring Mhairi Lawson) and trio sonatas offer further variety, as does the catchy Lord Kelly’s Reel - a quirky reminder of why Erskine was affectionately known as Fiddler Tam. _{The Scotsman} The playing by the Scottish baroque ensemble Concerto Caledonia is wonderfully subtle yet vigorous, and the recording captures all its delicacy. A delightful CD. _{The Times} Vivaciously played, with full use of the fashionably extreme dynamics of the Mannheim style, Fiddler Tam is an attractive tribute to an unusual talent. _{The Independent on Sunday}