A plucky festival that comes with lots of strings attached
The Scottish harp scene has come a long way since the Edinburgh International Harp Festival was launched, with the music of the clarsach or lever harp developing formidably in style and technique. Friday’s opening concert of the Festival’s 43rd iteration exemplified this, featuring the venturesome duo of fiddler Chris Stout and harpist Catriona Mckay, whose traditionally based but very contemporary music ebbed and flowed between frenetic excursions and sudden quietudes.
Their extended opening piece, Glenshee, was an example, its impressionistic soundings and bird calls from Stout’s viola and fiddle against gentle harp, working up into a darting reel of sorts, fiddle flurries against busily responsive harp, holding back then letting go. This empathetic alchemy continued with the musical fisticuffs of Bare Knuckle and the melodic weaving of the Generosity of Aird.
Wide-ranging geographically as much as stylistically, Shetland-based, Minnesota-born harpist Sunita Staneslow’s credo seems to be “have harp will travel”. She opened the concert with glittering evocations of the Northern Lights as seen from her adopted home of the island of Unst.
She gave a stately account of Turlough O’carolan’s Bridget Cruise and a surprisingly effective arrangement of Bach’s famous Toccata in D Minor. Having worked as a therapeutic harpist in a children’s hospital in Israel, she included a Lebanese melody and, quoting both Psalm 34’s injunction to seek peace and lines by a Gazan poet killed by an Israeli air strike, sounded glittering strings to invoke more light, Northern or otherwise, amid the current darkness.
Saturday night was South American night, with a vengeance. It opened in dazzling form by Paraguayan harpist Sixto Corbalan and guitarist Pedro Martinez, whose repertoire included polcas and guaranias, setting the bar high with their opening Susurros de la Noche – Whispers in the Night – as the big rich-toned harp progressed from stealthy introductory phrases into bright cascades and staccato runs alongside intensifying guitar rhythms.
Each took a solo, Corbalan’s Guarania para Ellas, a haunting nocturne punctuated by outbursts, while guitarist Martinez’s Marina was a gently affectionate-sounding melody. Their closing number was a rollicking homage to their native polca dance form, with both players cutting loose.
There was much exuberance, too, from the Colombian and Venezuelan music and dance of Diego Laverde Rojaz and Friends. There was something of the concert party about them, Diego playing the plains harp – arpa llanera, accompanied by Camillo Menjura on guitar and the little quatro guitar, maracas player Andrea Laverde and two singers – Isabel Zentner and the ebullient Hector de Jesus Martinez “Pajarito”.
Against the rhythmic background whirr of harp and quatro, Martinez gave declamatory voice to “I Am the Plainsman”, a stamp of identity repeated later by Zentner who gave a persuasive delivery to Sava – “What’s Happening”, then what was effectively “I was born a plainswoman”.
She and Martinez also whirled and stomped about the stage in some lively joropa dances, not least for the spirited grand finale, when the ensemble was joined by the earlier harp-guitar duo.
The festival ends on Tuesday night with a concert featuring the Highland harp-fiddle duo Ingrid Henderson and Iain Macfarlane, Irish harpist Anne-marie O’farrell and Gaelic singer Margaret Stewart.