ED2017 5/5 Reviews ED2017 Music Reviews

Echoes And Traces (Cappella Nova)

By | Published on Friday 25 August 2017

This was a magical evening of new choral music by eight Scottish composers inspired by ‘Nobilis Humilis’, an early plainchant piece honouring Orkney’s murdered Viking Saint, Magnus. Cappella Nova sang this complex, contemporary music with great skill and sensitivity; they were particularly impressive using a range of unusual, cutting-edge vocal techniques, required by the composers to express a mixture of tragedy and rejoicing within the work. Orkney is a collection of islands with a common thread (as are these compositions) – and this is what I took from ‘Echoes and Traces’. For me the overwhelming conjured presence was the landscape of Orkney – enduring, remote, bleak, dramatic – which in busy central Edinburgh is quite an achievement for both composers and performers!

Greyfriars Kirk and St Giles Cathedral, until 25 Aug.
tw rating 5/5 | [Louise Rodgers]



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