Music review: Pipes & strings: mr mcfall's chamber, Glasgow

PIPES and drums we know, and their sound currently greets anyone stepping out of Glasgow's Queen Street Station and into George Square, where top pipe bands perform in the most public arena of Piping Live!, the city's week-long count-down to the World Pipe Band Championships on Saturday.

Pipes and strings are a different kettle of fish. How do you balance the uncompromising voices of the various Scottish bagpipes with a string quartet – albeit one bolstered by piano, drums and bass guitar? Overall, the collaboration of piper and whistle player Fraser Fifield and the venturesome Mr McFall's Chamber met the challenge well. There were times when McFall's strings sounded diminished, particularly against the torrent of Fifield's Highland pipes in The Beast, but there was much that was rewarding in this concert, which largely celebrated the music of the late Martyn Bennett.

McFall's arrangement of Bennett's serene string evocation, The Peewit, was notable, shifting into the beatier Kilchoan Ferry with the entry of Fifield's mellifluous low whistle, while Piece for String Quartet, Percussion and Scottish Small Pipes in C was testimony to Bennett's wide-ranging creativity.

The evening was opened by the potent chemistry of piper Finlay Macdonald and fiddler Chris Stout, accompanied by guitarist Mike Bryan, which ranged from Stout's rendering of Da Day Dawn – a haunting solstice signal over a pipe drone – to the more predictable speed-of-light reels and a hypnotic, spinning Breton set.