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The fiddle's recent domination of the competition that's come to be affectionately known as Young Trad continued with this year's winner, Rona Wilkie from Oban, becoming the fourth fiddler in a row to hold the title and emerging from a group of six finalists that included three other fiddlers alongside singers in Gaelic and Scots.

As ever, the toughest job, next to the finalists themselves, belonged to the judges, but on a night when the sound quality in the auditorium seldom flattered any of the performers – the fiddlers suffered especially – I felt they made the correct decision. Opting to bring her own musicians, Wilkie arrived having obviously put a lot of thought into the structure of her performance.

Her opening air – from Islay but with a certain Scandinavian tinge to it – showed beautiful poise, control and expression and what followed demonstrated her strong personality, her awareness of dynamics, real feeling for traditional Scottish styles including the strathspey and bagpipe phrasing, and her engagement both with her accompanying trio and the audience as the music ebbed and flowed.

If none of the others showed quite the same command, and this despite Wilkie losing her voice and having to scrap the song element of her programme, there were commendable efforts from fellow fiddlers Roisin Anne Hughes, from Glasgow, whose well-chosen opening set had a lovely shape, and the engagingly enthusiastic Orcadian Catriona Price, and Gaelic singer Kirsty Watt, who recovered from a nervy beginning to sing with growing assurance.

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