Over The Sea To Skye concert opens Brighton Early Music Festival’s autumn sequence

Review by Richard Amey. St Martin’s Church, Lewes Road. *Mary-Jannet Leith recorders, Magdalena Loth-Hill violin, Florence Petit cello, *Thomas Allery harpsichord, with guests Jonatan Bougt thorbo & baroque guitar, Ruairi Bowen tenor (* pre-concert talk, 7pm).

Authentic traditional Scottish songs in Hesperi’s own arrangements, punctuating French and Italian baroque instrumental music, all contemporaneous with the heart-stirring story of the Great Jacobite Rebellion 1743-45, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Culloden battle defeat, depicted in the popular historical TV drama ‘Outlander’. Love interest: the pre-battle marriage of a rebel highlander to a time-travelling wife, a stillbirth, and eventually him badly wounded.

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There seems an innate freedom in so much live early music that it casts a spell so easily revived once heard again after time away. As BREMF resumed for the autumn, what did it for me this time around? I think, the sound of a sopranino recorder gently piercing the sound cavern of St Martin’s. Could I have called it sublime? I think I could. The moment Mary-Jannet Leith chose to introduce it, five items into this attractive story concert. It made such a surprise entry. She suddenly switched from the warm and mellow tenor recorder with which already, deep into her pre-concert talk, she had sliced me in half. She had broken her long stretch of spoken word at last with a musical illustration, which she played with gloriously instantaneous affinity, affection and nuanced expression – as her personal switch was thrown into performing mode.