Fringe: Home and Away – Songs of Travel, and Return
St Michael’s Church - 22/08/23
Brian Bannatyne Scott, bass | Stuart Hope, piano | Emma Lloyd, violin
One of the pleasures of this year’s Fringe has been rediscovering venues off the beaten track, and it seems that other discerning Fringe visitors agree. Far from the hustle and queues of the Assembly and Pleasance, it was good to see large audiences at Stockbridge Church on 11th August for Jacqui Dankworth’s inspiring jazz, at St Cecilia’s Hall on 19th August for the Spinacino Consort’s beautiful early musicianship, and at The Royal Scots Club on 22nd August for new Edinburgh theatre company, Necessary Cat’s well-cast and imaginatively directed ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (a real play, with an interval!)’
This afternoon’s concert by bass Brian Bannatyne Scott, one of a series of concerts held in the spacious St Michael’s Church, has also attracted a large and appreciative audience. For a singer in semi-retirement, Brian’s voice retains power and subtlety which reaches to every part of the building. He says it’s the longest concert he’s done in the last few years, but there is absolutely no sense of strain or tiredness at any point in the recital.
Brian has consistently supported the work of Scottish composers and I’d like to focus on his singing in Scots, which he does in two World Premieres of songs by Scottish composers. Many of us have suffered over the years with misjudged choices of dialect songs by singers from furth of Scotland, and it’s good to hear Brian’s forthright and clearly enunciated Scots singing. Edinburgh composer, Nigel Don’s song cycle ‘Don’t Ask the Time’ is written for bass, piano and violin, an unusual but very effective combination. Robert Burns’ ‘O a’ the Airts the Wind Can Blaw,’ chosen by Don as an example of mature love, is given a lovely setting with the violin part interplaying beautifully with voice and piano. Brian’s tender singing of Burns’ words reminds us how well the Scots language can portray emotion, and it occurs to me that Don’s song could become one of these rare compositions that achieves the status of the traditional tune. In a wide-ranging series of texts, I’ll mention another (non-Scots) poem, G K Chesterton’s ‘The Rolling English Road’ whose galloping heptameters and alliterative place names are given full impact in Brian’s singing of Don’s deceptively jaunty music – for the drunkard inevitably makes his way to Paradise, by way of Kensal Green Cemetery. (The poem was an O Level set text in England at one time – my partner cheerfully rattled off two verses when I told him about the concert.)
The second world premiere by Hugh S Pyper features two poems by Perth poet, William Soutar (1898-1943) in settings for bass and piano. Soutar, crippled by ankylosing spondylitis, was bed-ridden for his last twelve years and yet managed to produce the remarkable love-poem ‘The Trysting Place’, which begins “O luely, luely cam she in.” Brian’s sensitive rendition of this and his stirring treatment of Soutar’ s less well-known ‘The Makar’ is a tribute to Pyper’s excellent verse settings.
Two Jacobite songs by the long-lived Caroline Oliphant (1766-1845) ‘Will Ye No Come back Again,’ and ‘The News fae Moidart’ are familiar to most of the audience, but Brian’s spirited singing makes us reflect again on the words.
Emma Lloyd is not only a superb violinist, but is a composer, and she gave us the world premiere of her work ‘The Sweetest Hours’. This is of course a quote from Robert Burns’ great song ‘Green Grow the Rashes’ whose melody is revealed right at the end of the work. Before that Emma took us on a wispy ethereal journey at times so high that some people’s hearing might have been challenged! But there was a clever interplay with the piano and as she came down the scale and increased the volume the work became more accessible, ending with Burns’ great melody. Emma is a musician to watch as a violinist and a composer.
