Sound Stories

St Monans Kirk, 27/6/2024

Sound Stories, Margret Köll (Baroque triple harp), Stefan Temmingh (recorders)

This year’s East Neuk Festival continued on the forenoon of the 27th June in the dramatically-situated T-shaped 14th-century St Monan’s Auld Kirk on the Fife Coastal Path with a recital of music for Baroque triple harp and recorders, played by Austrian harpist Margret Köll and South African recorder player Stefan Temmingh.  Svend McEwan-Brown, Artistic Director of the Festival, spoke in his introductory remarks how some programmes require detailed research and planning to curate, whilst others come together magically.  ‘Sound Stories’ was undoubtedly in the latter category.  The beautiful triple harp and a floor stand with an array of recorders of assorted pitches (and corresponding sizes) stood teasingly at the altar.

Stefan Temmingh was first to the altar and played an ornamented chorale tune ‘Onse Vader in Hemelryck’ by Dutch pre-Baroque composer Jacob van Eyck, with pauses between the lines in the manner of Lutheran hymnody, followed by a highly ornamented brisk ‘double’ variation.  A leap forward in time to 20th-century satirical Erik Satie and his ‘Choral hypocrite’.  This was introduced on two soprano recorders played simultaneously the manner of a double aulos, with strange discordant harmonies, as Margret Köll stepped up to take her place behind the harp, an ancient sound world evoked by the ensuing accompanied melody on the tenor recorder.  This segued into the authentic Baroque chorale ‘Vater unser in Himmelreich’ by Georg Böhm.  With this spellbinding hint of the unexpected scope of timbral possibilities of this unusual instrumentation, we were prepared for the goodies to follow.

“Ah, Bach” – fans of M.A.S.H. and Radar O’Reilly will be of a certain age – was up next in the guise of the first four dance movements of the D-minor Partita for solo violin, transposed to A minor and arranged for treble recorder and harp, introduced by Stefan Temmingh. Violinists try to phrase lines as if they were being breathed, so it is perhaps not surprising that the music sounded natural on the recorder.  In the Allemand, the repeats were performed with idiomatic ornamentation, the lower phrases transposed up an octave to fit.  Arpeggiated chords with lovely base notes on the harp were quite delicious.  The Corrente was equally delightful, the dancing recorder set off with little fragments of counter-melody on the harp.  The Sarabande was stately, with timbres that had me recalling Scarlatti’s most achingly beautiful melancholy melodies and some phrase endings given to the harp.  The Gigue tripped lightly and gaily, raising many a smile despite the minor key, bringing the sequence to a close.

Margret Köll introduced 3 pieces by the Crail-born 18th-century Scottish composer/collector, James Oswald, from his Caledonian Pocket Companion (which apparently ran to 12 volumes).  She spoke of her own creative roots in Austrian folk harp music before becoming fascinated by historical instruments and their repertoire. The first piece, ‘Steer her up and haud her gaun’, with a dancing melody on treble recorder rich in idiomatic diminished sevenths and some mischievous rhythms in the harp, had an infectious glee, finishing with a strummed glissando like a swirl of a kilt.  The second, ‘My Nanio’, played on the tenor instrument, was a lovely song of devotion, a minor key melody with a ‘turning’ in the major.  The set concluded with ‘Bonny Christy’, another dance, on the soprano recorder, with nice off-beat accents in the ‘turning’ and concluding with a jig variation.

Actual Scarlatti next, with arrangements of a pair of harpsichord sonatas, K.32 followed by K.1, the former slow and lovely on tenor, the latter a fast and thrilling hornpipe with lots of baroque sequences, concluding with an exciting accelerando. 

The final set alternated pieces by modern Danish composer Thomas Koppel with 17th-century Spanish composer Lucas Ruiz de Ribazaz, the former rhapsodic and free-spirited, the latter sounding strangely Andean in this instrumentation, creating the illusion of travels in time as well as space.  The sopranino instrument made a few starring appearances in this set. Koppel’s ‘I know you are crossing the borders somewhere’ and ‘And I know you’re remembering, you distant boy’ featured a marching rhythm and some very agile sopranino ornamentation.  Ribazaz’ ‘Xacaras’ danced gleefully and rhythmically, the sopranino split in two to act as claves. Koppel’s ‘And I’m still feeling you in my arms’ had a free-ranging cadenza with birdsong emulation on the sopranino.  Ribazaz’ ‘Folias’ with bass recorder was an imaginative set of variants on ‘La Folia’, bridging to Koppel’s very far Eastern-sounding ‘There I dance my dance on black feet’, concluding with a very fast, free-ranging and abandoned dance ‘In a symphony of galloping hooves’.  Wild and thrilling.

The enthusiastic applause was rewarded with an encore: an Astor Piazzolla tango in soulful melancholy vein, the tango rhythm sustained on the harp with some delicious bass notes, the minor key melody on the alto recorder, finishing with a delicious morendo, bringing a super recital to an end.