Shadows and Light

Musique Royale, a summertime celebration of Nova Scotia’s musical heritage brings performances of early and traditional music to venues of historic and cultural significance in the province. The Evergreen Theatre has been included in their program for a few years now and this year brought us one of the highlight performances of the season in the persons of Chris Norman and David Greenberg. See the photo gallery of the concert here or read on for my impressions of the performance.

I began to run out of superlatives very soon into this joyous and exhilerating performance. Their stated mission for this concert was to give a three-dimensional program ranging from traditional Cape Breton and 18th Century Scottish music through European classical and Baroque. Our exhuberant journey started off with Chris singing Bannocks of Barley and proceeded through a wonderful selection of pieces by these virtuosos on the wooden flutes, Scottish small pipes, Estey harmonium and violin. Among them were gypsy tunes from the English border region with Scotland, a 15th Century battle tune, Harlow, and dance tunes from the Western Isles of Scotland. The traditional “Last Rose of Summer”, a sweet, sad piece sung by Chris was accompanied by harmonious humming from the audience and then moved smoothly to the lively notes of the final tune of the 1st half.

During the second half we had a variety of tunes including the amusing Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog and a medley of pieces performed by Chris or David or both, passing from player to player like graceful dancers performing perfectly choreographed moves. The final selection was about beer, fittingly it seemed on a warm summer night.

It was a special evening and a particular highlight for me was their rendition of (and my introduction to) the last two movements of the 18th Century Baroque Sonata in E minor by Georg Philipp Teleman. It was a delightful performance of warm deep notes and soaring sweet heights of breathtaking beauty.

Although the duo has not yet released a CD together, this is in the works and we are treated to a teaser track of the new CD entitled “Hacky Honey”, a border Gypsy tune on bagpipe and fiddle on their photo gallery of the night. here.

Thank you so much to both of these outstanding performers for such a special night.

Ellie