Transplanted tributes

High Heels and Horse Hair, the young violin and cello duo who brought their skills to Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden on Saturday, are bringing them back in the spring to the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, for a repeat of their picturesquely devised programme entitled Transplanted.

Though the repertoire for violin and cello can hardly be called vast, Alice Rickards and Sonia Cromarty have been transforming it with the eighteenth-century Scottish composer James Oswald as their inspiration. Using his compendium of 96 Airs for the Seasons, each of them depicting a different plant or flower, as their starting point, they invited eight present-day Scottish composers -  David Fennessy, Martin Kershaw, Stuart MacRae, Edward Maguire, Chris Stout, Hanna Tuulikki, David Ward, and the gifted Judith Weir (now successor to Peter Maxwell Davies as Master of the Queen’s Music)  to do likewise by producing miniature musical depictions of flowers and plants of their own choice. The only condition has been that each piece be confined to a single sheet of paper, of admittedly flexible size.

First to hear the resultant programme was an audience at the Threave Garden Visitor Centre at Castle Douglas on October 10, with Greenbank Gardens, Glasgow, and the lecture hall at Edinburgh’s Botanic Garden to follow. Birnam Arts Centre and Ardkinglas House, Argyll, will be visited later this month. with Huntly and Newtonmore in November.
20 October 2014