Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
At some point in the future our descendants will look back on the period of post-World War Two popular music and declare it be akin to how we perceive, for the most part, the realm of what we consider to be classical music; the words stuffy, inaccessible, even perhaps relic, certainly historical, will be tossed around by youths as much as for the last 70 years, teenagers, Generation X’s and beyond have insisted that the likes of Beethoven, Schuber, and Tchaikovsky are not relevant to the world today.
Some but not all, a few will see the connection between the period of great excess and symphonies to today’s music in their burgeoning years, some will come across a moment where it blows the mind in later life, and whilst the unintended will never embrace it, the deep and unremitting fact is that the genre unfolds in our daily lives more often than just via the realms of advertising, the adaption of the jingle, and it is when we hear it separately, perhaps unexpectedly as part of a novel experience, that we understand its place in the modern world.
The story of Swan Lake is universal, but few perhaps know of its connection to the tale of Eala Shàilean, a love story that is encompassed in the Gaelic language in The Swan of Salen, and in The Willow Trio’s Romy Wymer, Sophie Rocks, and Sam MacAdam, the magical interpretation of both the Gaelic story of Dòmhnall and Mairead and that of its musical forbear of Tchaikovsky’s own Swan Lake is one of elegance, tremendous style, and as with what the imagination conjures, one of enhanced grace.
The trio’s passion is evident across the board as tracks such as Waltzes, Hungarian Dance, Dòmhnall nan Dòmhnall, Puirt À Beul, The Loch In The Morning, Danses des Cygnes, The Hunt, and the finale of Coda, all cry out for recognition, and deservedly so finding it in the response of the listener. For in this new aural setting, the swan’s regal status, is comparable to its legendary status, one of fidelity, one of devotion.
The narrative is enticing, the sound spectacular, and once and for all, the sophistication of the music reminds us not to dismiss so easily the past and the geniuses behind the art form, for this is a mirror held up to the age with absolute class.
The Swan Of Salen, the call of the faithful, the polish of the refined, all brought together by the classical sound of the harp in all its resplendent glory.
The Willow Trio’s debut album, The Swan Of Salen, is released on Friday 17th February.
Ian D. Hall