East Neuk Festival
Catrin Finch
St Ayle Church, Anstruther
Keith Bruce
five stars
A RECITAL by harpist is Catrin Finch is a global journey, as you might expect of a Welsh woman whose residency at the East Neuk Festival was at the end of a tour in partnership with Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita. Playing a French electro-acoustic instrument custom-made for her, Finch began with a French transcription of a Bach Partita that is a virtuosic discipline on the violin, for which it was written, and even more astonishing to hear and see played on the harp.
Smetana’s patriotic river-run through the Czech Republic to the city of Prague, The Moldau, was nothing less than an orchestral reduction for her instrument, and when it brought her programme to a close it was perfectly possible to hear the entire symphonic ensemble in her playing.
In between, Finch was a wonderful guide, with the sort of relaxed, informative and often funny style that distinguished percussionist Colin Currie’s presentation of his own music.
So when she claims that Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune was “written for the piano, but meant for the harp” it sounds plausible in the utterance as well as the performance. The Hispanic strand to her repertoire, obvious in music by Spanish pianist Isaac Albeniz, was also audible in the Santa Fe Suite, composed by her countryman William Mathias for Caryl Thomas a little over 30 years ago, which culminates in a fiery Sun Dance from the Tex-Mex borderlands. If that is the international sound of modern Wales, Finch balanced it with the traditional Lisa Lan, more characteristically mournful of her national music, as she conceded.
But perhaps the most fascinating excursion on her tour was to Patagonia, where she had played in the company of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales on a visit to the Welsh-speaking community established there by migrant miners. That was a singularly inventive excuse to learn Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango, and Finch produced such a lively version of the well-known tune the detour was more than justified.
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