RSNO & Ellie Slorach: When Fish Begin to Crawl, Celtic Connections Glasgow review: 'captivating'

Mixing live orchestral performance with pre-recorded video, this call to arms against climate change apathy made for a wonder-filled evening, writes David Kettle

RSNO & Ellie Slorach: When Fish Begin to Crawl, New Auditorium, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ★★★★★

Any film that manages to shoehorn several billion years of creation and evolution into a mere 25 minutes – entirely convincingly, it has to be said – must be on to something. To call When Fish Begin to Crawl a film, however, is doing it a bit of a disservice. It’s rather a musical-cinematic contemplation of nature, a call to arms against climate change apathy, and a deeply moving symbol of hope, as epitomised by the biological richness and immense carbon stores of the Flow Country in Caithness and Sutherland.

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If that sounds ambitious, then yes, When Fish Begin to Crawl is certainly that. If it sounds worthy or preachy, then the project conveys its themes with such a deftness and lightness of touch – and with remarkable clarity of narrative, given it’s entirely wordless – that its messages seep into the consciousness without you even noticing.

It was a lockdown brainchild of composer/director Jim Sutherland and fellow director Morag McKinnon, and it received a live musical performance of its evening-long score from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – on vivid, inspirational form under conductor Ellie Slorach – on the final evening of Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival, with three large screens horseshoed behind the orchestra in the RSNO’s New Auditorium.

When Fish Begin to CrawlWhen Fish Begin to Crawl
When Fish Begin to Crawl | Kris Kesiak

It’s full of images that lodge in the mind – lost animals silhouetted against a backdrop of roaring blazes, or kids paddling in the sea with Dounreay looming in the background. Sutherland’s subtle but powerful score, too, refuses both facile mimicking of on-screen action and manipulative signposting – for the most part, at least. His ideas develop organically (appropriately enough) and build to climaxes of considerable awe and splendour, even in the cacophonous tumult set to images of human destruction and warfare.

While the joyful sounds accompanying closing scenes of happy farms and climate protests stray dangerously close to cliché, they nonetheless provide the hope we’re all crying out for. When Fish Begin to Crawl is a wonder-filled, captivating creation, and an important one too.

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