This marvelous collection marries the beautiful and ethereal sounds of Cynthia Cathcart's wire-strung harp with some of the loveliest and most haunting of Scottish traditional melodies. I find myself unable to listen to them now without the echo of this sweetness in my ears. So how could you not love this recording?

There's a tradition in Scottish music that the sound of the pipes is based on the sound of the human voice, and the vocable notation of pipe music, canntaireachd, is part of that. The Gaelic words to some of the tunes are inextricably mixed with the tune itself, and in fact the cadence of the words (when written out with proper notation of long and short vowels, etc.) make it possible to sing the songs without any musical notation. And any changes in the tune can render the words unintelligible.

If this is true of bardic poetry and pipe music, it must also be true of the wire-strung harp, or clarsach, that most ancient of Scottish instruments. All through this collection I hear the sound of the human voice ringing with passion or sorrow or love, and Cathcart's interpretations of traditional tunes are infused with her regard for their history and meaning.

The collection is beautifully recorded. We hear every note with great clarity. The accompanying instruments add a great deal to the mix, from the sound of the war drum and carnyx (the ancient Pictish war horn, its sound duplicated on the didjuridu by Tim Whittemore) and the distant sound of pipes in "Brian Boru," Eric Cathcart's Irish whistle on "New Claret" and the peals of cathedral bells from the Washington National Cathedral on "Edward Cocoran/Mrs. Crawford of Donside" and "The Banks o' Clyde."

Cathcart steps aside to give us the full benefit of Mike Scott's pipes on "Doctor Ross's 50th Welcome to the Argyllshire Gathering." The echoes of similarity we hear between the two instruments illustrate the tie between them, as well as reminding us that many of these tunes are played on the fiddle as well.

The liner notes are well-researched and fascinating, and give us enough information about the tunes themselves, as well as the history of the instrument, to make me want to learn more. And to hear more -- especially from Cynthia Cathcart.

- Rambles
written by Joyce Rankin
published 24 January 2004