Scotch Strathspey and Reel at the Grainger

Soprano Vivien Hamilton and her frequent partner in music Glenn Riddle presented a Romantic and evocative concert – ‘Scotch Strathspey and Reel’ – in the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne to close public programs there for the year.

Multiple images of Percy Grainger from the ‘In the Round’ mural peered at the audience through the open grand piano, and a beaded Rose Grainger evening gown flanked the singer.

The audience’s curious perspective nicely illustrates the way a museum space can add layers of depth and meaning to performance.

The program included work by Grainger, naturally enough, as well as Edvard Grieg, Grainger’s favourite composer, and Frederick Delius.

The cinematic styles of both Grieg and Grainger were highlighted, with Ms Hamilton explaining that Grieg’s compositions are unparalleled in their ability to convey meaning so fully in music, and are for this reason so often included in film sound tracks.

A feature of Public Programs at the Grainger this year, which has included concerts by Jenny M Thomas and Iain Grandage, Brigid Burke, Colin Offord, and the Bent Leather Band, among others, has been the creative blending by the artists of education about the music and instruments with performance.

Participants have heard Grainger’s hardanger fiddle brought to life once more and learned about contemporary makers living in Tasmania, and experienced Offord’s Great Island Mouthbow and Chinese double flutes.

In ‘Scotch Strathspey and Reel’ the audience learned how Grainger worked the folk style of traditional sea shanty and highland reel into even his most highly wrought pieces. Grainger revered the authenticity of folk music, and its inclusiveness of the ‘ordinary’, a view that Scottish-born Ms Hamilton says is part of Grainger’s distinctive, “everyone is equal”, Australian identity.

www.grainger.unimelb.edu.au