Music
One Fine Day
St Margaret's, Braemar
Keith Bruce
five stars
THERE are parallels with James MacMillan's composer-led, community-embracing yet immaculately high quality Cumnock Tryst, and with the chamber music concerts in the long-term restoration project that is Glasgow's Cottier, but the mini-festival that composer Graham Fitkin and his partner, harpist Ruth Wall, curated at Braemar's new arts venue was a singular occasion, albeit one that intended as a pilot for a longer event in the years to come.
The parade of virtuosi Fitkin introduced certainly showed off the possibilities of the redundant church. Not only did saxophonist Simon Haram premier a new Fitkin composition, entitled Braemar, inside the building, he also called the audience to the building by performing it and a selection of other solo pieces from on top of the tower. On the road from there to a closing recital of (mostly) unaccompanied early music by vocal quintet The Marian Consort, Fitkin also supplied a duo for Haram and Wall, Spill, and two unlisted additions to the programme – a clapping piece by himself and Wall, Soft Wac, and a world premiere for the Braemar Choir, Cum Tandem. It emerged after an instrumental introduction by violinist Ruth Palmer, whose account of Bach's Partita No.3 and Sonata No.3 were as full-blooded as you are ever likely to hear with the following Sonata from Belgium's Eugene Ysaye an ideally passionate-sounding partner.
Counter-tenor Rory McCleary's group wove James MacMillan and Thomas Tallis into a programme built around the music of Portugal's Estevao Lopes Morago, but there was one more Graham Fitkin gem to come there too, when Wall, who had joined the singers for MacMillan's Os Mutorum, made her last appearance of the evening on the composer's Lost, a song of breath-taking loveliness that had seemingly found its ideal environment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here