87 f
saying that: “My music is based on something that is not completely a clean cut, but it is a cut. It’s them and us ... I sing for us. I have always sung for us.”
Enoch’s rendition of the traditional Scot-
tish ballad Bonnie Susie Clelland is amongst the best I have heard. This very old song (a variant of Child ballad 65, first published in 1825) describes the honour-killing of Susie by her father and brother in Dundee. Because she loved an Englishman, she was burned to death. Burning (or hanging) was indeed the penalty in medieval Scots law for sexual indulgence by an unmarried woman – unless her family protected the offender or found another father for the child. The tune of Bon- nie Susie Clelland is one of the sweetest in the Scots Trad repertoire. The yearning, sad, wistfulness of the melody, sung in Enoch’s low, gruff voice, gives the listener an over- whelming sense of impending tragedy, and it is the wail of the sole accompanying instru- ment, the uilleann pipes, that expresses our grief and anguish on behalf of brave Susie Clelland and the horror of her death. Out- standing.
www.enochkent.ca www.borealisrecords.com
Paul Matheson
ZESPOL POLSKI MARII POMIANOWSKIEJ
At The Sources Of Chopin’s Music Musart MUS 001
MARIA POMIANOWSKA & FRIENDS
Chopin On 5 Continents CM Records CM 1009
Though Frédéric (in Polish Fryderyk) Chopin fled Poland from the Russian suppression of the November Uprising when he was 21 and never returned, the folk tunes he’d heard as he grew up remained an influence in his music, particularly his mazurkas inspired by mazureks from Mazovia. But in sound his piano-centred concert-hall pieces were far removed from the abrasive energy of tradi- tional folk dance musicians.
In At The Sources Of Chopin’s Music Maria Pomianowska aims, as she puts it, “to reduce folk music and Chopin’s mazurkas to a common denominator, to try to give the listener a completely new view on his music”. Beginning as a cellist and singer, she has been largely responsible for reviving the old Polish folk knee-fiddles, whose strings are touched by the player’s nails, rather as Bulgarian gadulka, and is their leading play- er. She also plays sarangi, gadulka and oth- ers of the worldwide family of vertical fid- dles. In her Zespól Polski (‘Polish Group’), plus guests, she brings together a team skilled in the techniques of folk, early and classical music on instruments including hammered dulcimer, violin, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipe, duduk, shawm, koncovka and other whistles and flutes, throat-singing, cello, guitar, bass and percussion.
They play ten of Chopin’s mazurkas as energetic band pieces open to exuberance and improvisation and sounding sometimes like early-music, sometimes closer to village music. Between and during most of the later part of the album, come a variety of other non-Chopin instrumentals and songs from folk music, from the fast dances of springing triple-time oberek and duple-time polka to Pomianowska’s singing, with elegant bowed string arrangement, of the slow, autumnal Lament and Lipa and, to a wide, surging grainy soundscape, the passionate Hej Sw.Jónie, and ending with a live performance of a well-known oberek.
Chopin On 5 Continents is a mighty piece of work in which Maria, bringing in this time 23 other musicians, takes Chopin on a world tour, interpreting 13 of his tunes – not just from his Polish-related music but his wider oeuvre – from the musical perspectives of 14 parts of the world. For example there’s a fla- menco version of Waltz Op.28 No.4, an African vocal harmony and percussion treat- ment of his prelude Raindrop, a galloping throat-singing Siberian approach to Krakowiak Ronda Op.14, and a very natural, soaring meld of Largo From Fantasia- Impromptu Op.66 with Indian raga vocals and instrumentation. It ends back in Poland: A Young Girl’s Wish with three female singers in a rollicking waltz and a coda symbolically on Chopin’s instrument, piano.
That description might suggest pastiche or stereotyping of some of the world’s musi- cal traditions, or a lumpen folking up of Chopin, but it’s far from that. Each piece is finely wrought, not sticking slavishly to a style but drawing on what it needs, blending factors from traditional styles with Chopin’s tunes in such a melodic, creative and sensitive process of integration that the boundaries disappear and it just emerges as rich, beauti- fully wrought music full of a constantly shift- ing panoply of textures and approaches to scale, harmony and rhythm. In a remarkably natural, though clearly painstaking-to- achieve, way it not only levels the playing- field, it’s a great game.
www.musart.pl Andrew Cronshaw
STEVE KNIGHTLEY Live In Somerset Hands On Music HMCD 33
Unbelievably, this is Steve’s debut live solo album – and it’s a cracker for it encapsulates all facets of his consummate talent, both in the writing and performing arenas, in a definitive and showstopping parade of mate- rial that really does span the years. It was recorded at The David Hall (a 19th Century former Congregational church) in the village of South Petherton, Somerset – an ideal acoustic space in which to capture Steve’s live presence. Among the 16 well-chosen tracks, several typically thoughtful covers and a handful of genuinely enterprising versions of traditional songs are interspersed with Steve’s own compositions; old favourites min- gling with rarely-heard items.
Steve Knightley
The proud extent of Steve’s all-round creativity is represented by a selection that presents anthemic narratives (Transported, Cousin Jack, Galway Farmer – the latter, unusually, presented unaccompanied) along- side the passionately yearning Exile, the aching Coming Home and a wry commentary on society’s current trend towards the loss of ‘real’ communication (Stop Copying Me).
Some of the set’s finest moments come
with Steve’s fresh and highly personal takes on traditional song: notably a spectral Rey- nardine and a strongly individual a cappella rendition of All Things Are Quite Silent. The Oakham Poachers also receives a powerful reading. For this song, as well as for Dylan’s Girl From The North Country and an intrigu- ingly well-fitting segué of Springsteen’s Downbound Train with his own Country Life), Steve brings onto the stage as special guests Philip Henry (dobro, harmonica) and Hannah Martin (fiddle), two young musicians who had joined Show Of Hands on some dates of the duo’s autumn Spires And Beams tour. The encore is the suitably audience-friendly new Knightley love-song Now You Know.
Although I could be wrong about this, it feels like the concert sequence appears to have been manipulated a little for the home- listening experience (aside from the editing- out of some enthusiastic applause, that is); nonetheless, the brilliant recording certainly captures both the acute sense of occasion and the professional lightness of touch that Steve brings to his performance as a counterweight to his total devotion to his art.
www.showofhands.co.uk David Kidman
THE QUEENSBERRY RULES Six Towns Acoustic Squeeze ASCD004
I’ll miss The Queensberry Rules. Their recent announcement that they’re calling it a day, for the moment at least, robs English roots not only of a distinctive sound but also a band who knew exactly what they were about and understood their own backyard like few others. That they came to a cross- roads was perhaps inevitable, facing the stark choice either to soldier on or admit they’d gone as far as they could.
Heartening then that they leave us with a recording that does them proud and ties in with the city that they wrote/sang so much about. Six Towns is a warm celebration of the century-old status of Stoke-on-Trent, when six towns united to become a city. Six tracks clock each of the urban centres and one fol- lows up the time the Fab Four played Hanley.
They’ve left the shelter of Fellside and gone back to their own Acoustic Squeeze label, wrapped the CD in a cardboard sleeve and lyric poster bearing a snap of the band in sepia tones. Once through the packaging you’re whamp straight into the unplugged, harmony-heavy funk of Sons Of A Hundred Years, a great chorus and drive-along melody. Next Upon, a reminder that the name is actu- ally Stoke-Upon-Trent and an examination of how names can lead to confusion. The Wilcox brothers are up to the mark with Mr. Tawney’s Classes, actually a tale of how edu- cation can give you the exact opposite of what you want, and Phil Hulse digs deep into social history with his exploration of Tunstall the most rebellious centre of the Potteries. That the Queensberrys have undertaken gigs with a local historians to push this release tells you that the limited edition of 500 will soon disappear and that right to the end they’re going to be pitching in as they run for home. So thanks for the memories, and let’s hope the forward plans deliver what they’ve achieved already.
www.thequeensberryrules.com Simon Jones.
Photo: Judith Burrows
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