Spiorachas: A High Place

With their fourth album, Scottish fiddle and piano partnership Charlie Grey & Joseph Peach confirm their ability to sing the Highland landscape, both maritime and inland, through their instrumental prowess. Some of these pieces are indeed drawn from songs, others are impressionistic, with Grey exploring the tonal variety of his ten-string hardanger d’amore through deftly subtle bow strokes and the lightest of touches. Others still are dance tunes, variously quiet, gently energetic and frankly vigorous.

At over eight minutes long, the comparatively epic ‘Reel’ moves through all of these moods, emerging from the mist, building its understated excitement and exiting as a gentle waltz. ‘Ghruamach’ finds Grey at his most rugged and dramatic, his melody-making rising in swells and feinting into blue notes as Peach’s piano quietly suggests changes of direction. It’s lovely stuff, with Peach occasionally adding harmonium colour and making a gorgeously tender piano feature out of one of Grey’s grandmother, the late, great Gaelic singer Ishbel MacAskill’s favourite songs, the lamenting lullaby, ‘Griogal Cridhe’ (Beloved Gregor).