Review from Hexham Abbey Festival

Performance was on 3.10.08, the review came out in the Hexham Courant on 10.10.08

HORSES Brawl is currently a duo, consisting of Adrian Lever on prepared and bowed guitar and Laura Cannel on fiddle, a collection of recorders and on crumhorn – a capped double reed medieval instrument.

They use these resources to create music that was at one moment delicate, reflective, gentle and often plaintive; at other times driving, intense, dynamic and dramatic.

An affection for the music deepened as the concert went on, and the audience assimilated the different sounds created with a limited palette of instruments.

Often this was done by the creation of antique sounds on modern instruments by the use on the fiddle of a lighter baroque bow or the use of a heavy viol bow and metal mute to recreate the rare Welsh fiddle, the crwth.
The simple addition of clothes pegs muted the sound of a modern metal stringed fiddle to create a gut-stringed viol sound.

The excellent intricate guitar work relied on lots of different open tunings; on occasion the use of an oyster card or piece of sponge, or on one lovely piece the use of a bow to create sad long sustained sounds, typical of the ancient forerunner of the modern guitar.

Fascinating as their undoubted technical and musical virtuosity was, even more fascinating was their creation of a patchwork quilt of different music from different backgrounds, times and geographies.

A typical piece might have started with a Welsh traditional gaillard, move on to a Bulgarian wedding tune and finish on a 13th century estompie – a hopping dance of the era in which we were all invited to participate!
An early French dance tune was married to a French chanson and finished with a contemporary Irish minuet.

Bewildering, maybe, but it did work, the joins were perfect and seamless – each part complementing in a wonderful interconnectedness; fusion music, a dreadful and overused term, if you like, but of a different and more magical nature.

What it did conclusively for me was to render inane the use of boxes and labels – early music, Renaissance music, folk music and medieval dance music etc. – all of which have frequently been used to describe these musicians and their various styles.

Their music to me is about demonstrating the common roots and interconnections that link all these music and traditions, and the echoes and valid relationships that have passed down into more modern music and especially what is termed contemporary folk music.

They seemingly reinvent the medieval musical world into the modern, while creating a very satisfying, cohesive and organic whole that made this a very rewarding evening.