Glenfiddich Piping Championships

BLAIR CASTLE, BLAIR ATHOLL

PACING the stage of Blair Castle Ballroom on Saturday, under the wan gaze of countless deer skulls, Angus MacColl piped an ancient pibroch to win the coveted world championship of solo Highland piping, the Glenfiddich Trophy.

MacColl, from Benderloch, Argyll, was one of ten top pipers invited to compete in this annual crme de la crme event. His pibroch, The Red Speckled Bull, attributed to the formidable early 18th-century piper Ranald MacAilean Og and commemorating a great feat of his strength, was an appropriate one to sound out magisterially within the weapon-draped walls of Blair Castle. In fact the piping and the atmospheric setting combined to make "the Glenfiddich" a memorable, if aurally demanding, experience, as each of the ten pipers played a pibroch, then returned to play a march strathspey and reel selection.

MacColl, a regular competitor who also won the competition in 1995, came first in the pibroch section, winning the Highland Society of London Trophy, and fourth in the march, strathspey and reel section, his accumulated marks from both making him the overall winner. The PLM Redfearn Trophy for march, strathspey and reel was taken - for the fifth time - by another Glenfiddich regular, Pipe Major Gordon Walker of Kelty, Fife, with a brisk and enthusiastically received set of the march Braes of Castle Grant, the strathspey Tulloch Castle and the ever-popular reel John Morrison of Assynt House. Greg Wilson from New Zealand came second overall, while Walker was third.

On Sunday the Glenfiddich fiddle competition, also held in the ballroom, under Raeburn's famous portrait of the 18th-century master Niel Gow, was won by Gemma Donald from Shetland, while Perdy Syers-Gibson of London and George Smith from Angus were second and third respectively.