Savourna Stevenson & The Edinburgh Quartet, Merchiston

Sue Wilson

The Scotsman

IN A telling aside during this Edinburgh International Harp Festival concert, having referred to her set-list’s spanning of numerous different genres, harpist/composer Savourna Stevenson wrinkled her nose and observed, “I don’t really like that word.”

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Billed as a mini-retrospective of her recording and composing career, right back to her 1985 debut album Tickled Pink, the programme certainly highlighted Stevenson’s fruitful lack of regard for genre divisions, especially now she’s working equally on the traditional clarsach and the classical pedal harp – a boundary-free approach, with a breadth and depth of technique to match, that underpins her status at the forefront of Scotland’s harp revival.

Traditional music remains a central wellspring of inspiration for her compositions, even if her innovative array of fingering methods and unorthodox keys or scales often transported these sources far beyond their roots – as in the eldritch atmosphere and dramatic colours of The Source, from her Tweed Journey suite, conjuring the tale of Thomas the Rhymer, and the vivid impressionism of Dawn, Earth, Wind and Water.

A clarsach-led first half, whose last couple of numbers featured Stevenson’s guitarist son [ Miles Norris ] , also wove in jazz and Latin influences.

Meanwhile, after the interval, the pedal harp took centre stage, primarily in her three-movement Harp Quintet, for which she was joined by the Edinburgh Quartet, in a beautifully intricate, bold yet delicate interlacing of different string timbres and textures, exploring and enriching the piece’s four core folk-song melodies.