The Oak and the Ivy

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Strathclyde Suite, 21/1/2025

Celtic Connections

Corrina Hewat: The Oak and the Ivy

What’s the collective noun for an assemblage of harps?  A ‘shimmer’ perhaps? I counted ten harps on stage – clarsachs, both nylon and wire-strung, electro-harps (looking to have been teleported from a 1950s sci-fi future), and a little Bohemian harp. They were all brought together and played by some of Scotland’s leading harpists (and one Breton) in order to realise once more composer Corrina Hewat’s piece ‘The Oak and the Ivy’, commissioned by Edinburgh International Harp Festival and premiered there a couple of years ago.

The piece took its inspiration from one Eugene Field’s ‘A Little Book of Profitable Tales’, first published in 1901. A fable of mutual support and playing to one’s strengths in the face of adversity, it was complemented by some of Hewat’s own poetry. (As well as being a virtuoso player she is a fine reader of her text.) With the harps divided into sections – chordal work, melody and counter-melody - the electro-harps provided a powerful bass end as the woodland scene of the story was set. The textures, supported by Dave Milligan’s tasteful piano, had plenty of heft throughout and were skilfully matched, with the earthy sound of the wire-strung harps providing a particularly striking part of the mix.

Apart from the instruments themselves, there seemed to be very little ‘folk’ influence in the music, with melodies that perhaps owe more to jazz and film music. Even the closing  ‘Reel of Contentment’ owed its folk credentials to its structure rather than its melody. This is not a criticism. Hewat is not afraid of extending harmonies beyond what you would expect to hear at a folk gig, nor of extracting a range of sounds from the instruments. One section featured what might be called ‘prepared’ harp, the strings dampened with various materials, while another section was all mediaeval cadences and riffs. One tiny criticism might be that the piece lacks variation in tempo, but ‘The Oak and the Ivy’ is a fine piece of modern music, joyfully played.

The evening was opened by the fiddle and cello duo, Alastair Savage and Alice Allen, recreating as they said the classic 18th century combination of instruments. Ayrshireman Savage is a prominent member of the BBC Scottish Symphony with all the tone and technique to match and is a superb player of Scottish fiddle music. Allen, like fiddle giant James Scott Skinner, is from Banchory and is no slouch either. Much of their spot was taken up with tunes of Savage’s composition, mixing Scottish and American tropes, a homage to the crosscurrents of the two countries’ fiddle traditions, all performed with impeccable musicianship.