Celtic Connections
Mìorbhail nam Beann, Strathclyde Suite, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
There's much to tempt tourists to Glen Orchy in the glorious footage that accompanies the songs and music played in celebration of the great Gaelic bard Donnchadh BÃ n Mac an t-Saoir, or Duncan Ban McIntyre, in Iain MacFarlane's commission for the 2014 Blas festival, which translates as the Wonder of the Mountains.
This was the central belt's first chance to experience the piece that MacFarlane, fiddler, singer, accordion and whistle player, compiled in partnership with Scottish National Heritage and a hand-picked cast including another Iain MacFarlane (the veteran broadcaster and retired brigadier), and it's reverent and irreverent, informative and entertaining in evoking a poet who could neither read nor write but who, from his works and reputation, clearly lived at one with nature.
The heart-stopping beauty of the landscape fed the eyes as MacFarlane and company treated the ears to new tunes and settings of words whose back stories highlighted a different time. These were days when a factor might take a kettle and a cow in lieu of rent outstanding - and get murdered for his trouble. On the lighter side, our heroes onstage were seen on film recreating, with much theatrical frustration and swatting with deerstalkers, McIntyre's hunting fiasco - or as the Sex Pistols might have had it, Who Didn't Kill Bambi?
Strong, heartfelt singing from fiddler-piper Ewen Henderson and MacFarlane himself on the Gaelic songs and empathetic playing from Scots singers, guitarist Ewan Robertson and pianist Hamish Napier, captured both the rugged and sweeter natures of love songs to places and people, and MacFarlane's fiddle air to the golden eagle confirmed his own sincerely poetic side.
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