A Scottish Spring

St Cecilia’s Hall 6/5/25

Huw Daniel (violins), Jan Waterfield (keyboards).

St Cecilia’s Hall and Museum on Niddry Street is part of the University of Edinburgh.  The elliptical-plan Sypert Hall upstairs is Scotland’s oldest purpose-built concert hall, dating from 1763, from when it was the home of the Edinburgh Musical Society until 1801.  It has a very attractive bright and airy visual appeal and an excellent acoustic for chamber music.  The Museum houses the University of Edinburgh’s Musical Instrument Collection of 6000 instruments dating from the 1500s to the present, a valuable internationally-renowned resource for researchers into musicology and historically-informed performance, as well the study and enjoyment of music generally.  In a series of galleries, over 600 instruments from the collection are on display to members of the public.  The collection also includes the impressive and invaluable Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments.  The Laigh Hall on the ground floor is a venue for small functions and receptions, lined by display cases with a smaller selection of instruments from the collection.  The work of  St Cecilia’s Hall and Museum is supported by its Friends.  On the evening of 6th May, I attended a concert, organised by the Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall and Museum, titled ‘A Scottish Spring’.  Huw Daniel (Baroque violinist and one of the Leaders of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) and Jan Waterfield (Harpsichord Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) performed works by Muffat and Geminiani, concluding with Beethoven’s ‘Spring Sonata’, playing on instruments from the collection.  The programme was introduced by Chair of the Friends, Professor Chris Kelnar, while the collection’s Curator, Dr Jenny Nex, presented an informative introduction to the instruments.

Georg Muffat, a Savoyard composer of Scottish descent (family name an older spelling of ‘Moffat’) lived most of his life in South Germany, writing in a Baroque style influenced by Lully and Corelli, both of whom he had met in his youthful travels.  His 1677 Sonata in D major opened and closed with a very Handelian arioso, flanking a suite of dance-like episodes, one a spirited jig, while another was slower, more graceful and quite tonally adventurous.  Huw played an old instrument from about 1720 of unknown manufacture, special because it was virtually unmodified, with the original short thick unraked neck and wedged fingerboard parallel to the belly, low bridge and thinner soundpost and bass bar, and of course gut strings.  It was great to have the opportunity to hear an instrument not adapted to take strings at higher tension with a greater tonal and dynamic range, able to insonify a concert hall and play sweetly and brilliantly (and in tune) up beyond the 7th position.   For the Muffat and indeed the whole concert, Huw used a Baroque bow (with a straight stick – I assume his own) held with a Baroque bowhold, with the hand further up from the frog.  Jan played on a 1709 single-manual harpsichord by London maker Thomas Barton, rescued from a hayloft and extensively refurbished in the 1990s.  The two instruments sounded well together, supported by the hall’s acoustic.

The same two instruments were used for two arrangements by Francesco Geminiani of Scottish tunes.  The first, ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament’, the age-old ballad of the jilted woman left holding the baby, was a beautiful air in the familiar Scottish style with plenty of  “scotch snaps”, flanking a more ornate and brisker central section, an ornamented variation of the main tune.  The second, ‘Auld Bob Morrice’, with a wistful melody not unlike the Irish tune ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, attributed to the same Rizzio whose murder was said to have been plotted by the enraged jealous Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was another sweet air, followed by an ornamented ‘double’ variation.   It remains true that I have never heard anything by Geminiani that I didn’t like.

For the Beethoven (in which neither instrument is in any sense ‘the accompanist’), three very different gut-stringed violins of Scottish manufacture from the collection were played, while the keyboard was an 1806 chamber ‘square’ piano by Andrew Rochead of Edinburgh, based on a Broadwood design.  It has a single pedal to raise the dampers, but there is no appreciable sustain or dynamic range and it sounded like a quiet fortepiano, the line delivery essentially staccato.  This has implications for expressive phrasing, but Jan accommodated these limitations fully.  Despite different violins for the first, two middle and final movements, the ensemble playing was mutually responsive to the keyboard’s limitations, so that the resulting chamber music phrasing was lyrical and very satisfying.  The violin in the first movement was an 1846 instrument by Thomas Hardie of Edinburgh, modelled on Stradivari dimensions, with a subtle, delicate and rather thin tone that blended well with the square piano in the  Sypert Hall but would struggle elsewhere.  I found the ‘rumbling’ ghostly figures in the left hand of the piano very satisfying.  For the lyrical slow movement and the playful scherzo, an 1873 instrument by Alexander Murdoch of Aberdeen delivered a characterful tone.  Its higher-arched belly suggests the shape of a Hardanger fiddle, while Huw said that its broader set of resonances even sounded as if it had sympathetic strings like the Norwegian instrument.  Again, the blended sound was very pleasing.  For the rondo-variation finale, a 1909 instrument (another Strad model) by Yorkshireman James Briggs, who moved from Wakefield to set up shop in Glasgow in 1893, delivered the sunny mood.  Very enjoyable.

Audience, ‘Friends’ and musicians mingled for drinks and a blether in the Laigh Hall after the performance, rounding off a memorable evening combining erudition and entertainment with an opportunity to discover another jewel in the capital, of which I had been hitherto unaware.

 https://friendsofstceciliashall.com/; https://www.stcecilias.ed.ac.u