| Subtitled
"A Curious Collection of Scottish Sonatas and Reels", this album
features Baroque Scottish music played like Scottish dance tunes and
Scottish Dance tunes played like Baroque... you get the idea. While it
sounds like a theory album, the performances are much too good to dismiss it
as such and this music is seated very deeply in a time when lines were not
drawn too sharply between classical and folk musics. Classical composers
since the 17th century (Purcell, Haydn, J.C. Bach, etc.) have created
settings of Scottish music, and Scottish musicians of the era were often
equally at home with jigs and gigues.
The music here is generally 18th
century and performed with an expressive and dynamic Baroque performance
sensibility. However, the performances are still a bit repressed, and this
album never quite wakes up (except for some of the Cape Breton music that
Greenberg is known for). Unfortunately, it is not helped by a slightly
pinched recorded sound in the violin. So, I leave this album on my Christmas
list for friends who love Baroque music. For my traditional friends I'll
look for Puirt a Baroque's earlier "Bach Meets Cape Breton". Rating: B.
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