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17th November 2009
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If the Cadbury’s Smash Martians landed in the Assembly Rooms during the annual fiddle celebration, they’d doubtless have comments to send home about the mysterious backpacks that come as near-standard with the event’s participants. As with our archaic peeling and cooking methods, they’d also end up having a laugh at what happens when these packs’ contents are revealed, because fiddle tunes invariably come accompanied by tales variously tall, mirthful or in some other way entertaining. Thus it was in a Sunday-afternoon programme that began with the playing of Aonghas Grant, rooted deep in Lochaber soil, and included a more recent addition to Scotland’s fiddling riches, Hungarian Jani Lang and his high-octane band, before culminating in the traditional, massed-instrument Stramash. At 78, Grant has the sort of authority that makes his tales of inspirational acts of skulduggery – not to mention how Perthshire fiddle legend Niel Gow came to compose a hornpipe for Nelson – sound as if they’re coming from pretty close to the source. His playing is similarly commanding, as well as sweet and vigorous – and with his son Angus, Shooglenifty’s famously hirsute fiddler, joining him, there was a true sense of tradition being passed on. Dubliner Caoimhin O Raghallaigh was shorter on vocal tale-spinning but by no means without narrative qualities in his playing. After an introductory pair of his own beautifully impressionistic compositions, and playing both standard and hardanger fiddles, he concentrated on tunes from the Irish, Norwegian and, briefly, American traditions, gentling out airs, jigs and marches with a minimum of notes and bow movement.
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