Album review: Douglas Lawrence: The Farewell

DOUGLAS LAWRENCE: THE FAREWELL ONLY AVAILABLE FROM www.douglaslawrence.co.uk****

The rich fiddle tradition of Scotland's North-East tends to be bypassed by youngsters whipping up hell-for-leather jigs and reels. How often do you hear a slow strathspey? All of which makes this recording by Douglas Lawrence – his first in 11 years – hugely welcome. Lawrence, a pupil of the great Hector MacAndrew and accompanied here largely by Alastair Moore on piano, refuses to be hurried, as his reels testify, but it is in the great airs and strathspeys of the masters – Gow (Niel and Nathaniel), Skinner, Milne, Fraser and Marshall – that this album reveals its riches. Take two classic slow strathspeys, JF Dickie's Delight or The Beauties of the North, or Scott Skinner's gloriously lachrymose Weeping Birches of Kilmorack, all are rendered with big-toned affection and unashamed emotion. The Farewell wasn't William Marshall's last tune, and this surely can't be Lawrence's final bow.