Out next week, Scottish fiddle player, singer and composer Isla Ratcliff releases The Scottish Four Seasons, a charming folk-trad reworking of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Hot on the heels of Radio 3 presenter Dr Hannah French’s new book The Rolling Year exploring Vivaldi’s ubiquitous work, Ratcliff’s spirited stylings give the score an earthy quality that stirs the heart and the imagination. Grab your Fair Isle, light the fire, and reach for something hot to wrap your hands around on a cold night. This is the Hygge of musical crossover.
Ratcliff’s setting is also uplifting, beautifully produced affair. Its sparse scoring for bass, piano, and single strings maintains an authentic feel whilst avoiding self-important pomposity. The microphones are set close in and the ambience deadened exposing delicate detail that tickles the internal organs and raises a smile even in the most melancholic movements.
The Flower’s Lament (the second movement from Spring) sees the gentle placing of chords at the keyboard, under which delicate pizzicato bass keeps us from anything too morose. Unison strings minus the vibrato in the following Frisking Lambs hints gives this a sweet and determined resilience as though spring in this context has a chilly edge and demands extra socks.
Dry strings drive the opening movement of Summer which, when it gets underway, has a cheeky upbeat lilt to it that makes me want to block out all of August for a Scottish coastline ideally remote and stark where I can go running barefoot alone. This day of rare abandon culminating in a visit to an equally remote pub for a glass of something and a plate of chips. It is on this track quite possibly I am my most distant from the original with little desire to ever hear it again in its original form.
Autumn surfaces a folk melody in Vivaldi’s original melody. Here it feels as though the material is relinquishing control to the insistence of the folk sensibility, but the mood delivers thanks to some tight ensemble and a modest percussive element from bass and dry scrunchy strings in the accompaniment that aren’t too far away from crisp autumn leaves and a pleasing nip in the air.
A chilly precision descends in Winter with sharp detail in bouncing strings and a pop-infused mid-tempo syncopated rhythms. Purists will clutch their pearls but the open minded types in need of a reliable pick me up will undoubtedly smile as they tap their feet resolutely to the off-beat. Far and away the most spectacular setting comes in the second movement of Winter – here titled The Hogmanay Waltz. Tender and heartfelt in the opening melodic line, when the accompanying second violin joins with a harmonic accompaniment there we’re fast approaching the end of the year in the company of a trusty mate, raising a glass to the past year and looking ahead to the next.
The Scottish Four Seasons is available on all the usual streaming platforms soon. If you want your listening to make a difference, buy it directly. Purchase via Bandcamp now.
