Chisholm Piano Concerto Piobaireachd – McLachlan and Kelvin Ensemble

CHISHOLM: Piano Concerto No. 1 “Piobaireachd”; Piano Works
Murray McLachlan, piano; Kelvin Ensemble
Dunelm Records DRD0174

Resurrections don’t come much more improbable than this. Erik Chisholm’s Piano Concerto “Piobaireachd,” unheard since a 1938 broadcast, emerges here not from some dusty archive but through sheer stubborn advocacy—the composer’s daughter Morag, pianist Murray McLachlan, and the Kelvin Ensemble staging a live performance at the 2001 NAYO Festival. That the work was published by Oxford University Press in 1939 yet required archaeological excavation to reassemble (the solo part didn’t even match the orchestral score!) tells you everything about Scotland’s shameful neglect of one of its most adventurous twentieth-century voices.

The sobriquet “MacBartók” gets tossed around, and yes, the Hungarian’s fingerprints are all over these scores. But what strikes me most forcefully about the concerto is how deeply Chisholm understood the pibroch form itself—not as exotic ornament but as structural principle. The opening movement builds from that characteristic drone and the nuanced filigree of the urlar with its upward sixth, expanding through variations toward the crowning creanluidh with the same inexorable logic you find in the great classical pibrochs. The microtonal sharpening of C and F natural to the bagpipe’s nine-note scale gets reimagined through orchestral colors, and Chisholm has the good sense not to literalize it but to suggest that distinctive tang through harmonic means.

The variants themselves show remarkable range. A toccata-like Scots dance erupts with genuine wildness, while a slow lyrical episode—and I’m glad someone else heard the kinship with Busoni’s Red Indian Diary—achieves that quality of remote loveliness the best Scottish music possesses when it isn’t being tartanized for tourist consumption. The scherzo’s rhythmic patterns, echoing puirt à beul (mouth music for dancing), develop a jazzy syncopation that never feels anachronistic. Chisholm had conducted and championed enough contemporary music in 1930s Glasgow to know exactly what he was doing.

The slow movement opens with gong stroke and tremolo strings—perhaps a touch theatrical, but effective in conjuring that highland mist through which the piano essays another pibroch-like melody. McLachlan describes it as “like pebbles falling in a clear pool,” which is both precise and poetic. When a Baxian trumpet penetrates the texture (and yes, the brass intonation occasionally reminds us this is a student orchestra in live performance), the nocturnal atmosphere intensifies without ever becoming overheated. The finale’s reel and strathspey rhythms provide necessary release, though with an edge of ribaldry that prevents mere jollity.

McLachlan plays with complete conviction and formidable artistry. His recorded survey of the solo piano works fills out the disc generously—almost too generously at 78 minutes, but who’s complaining when the music proves this engaging? The G minor Sonatina from 1922 runs nearly eighteen minutes, rather stretching the sonatina designation, but the teenage composer already commanded an impressive palette. The plaintive dropping phrases and decorative arabesques of the slow movement occasionally sparkle with Billy Mayerl-like insouciance before the athletic rondo finale.

“Star Point” reveals quasi-French influences—John Ireland territory—while the Four Elegies justify that MacBartók nickname through their dark songs of tragic import, rumbling with Bartókian clangour and bagpipe skirl. The Fourth Sonatina draws on Spanish lutenist sources with Rubbra-like delicacy. But it’s “With Cloggs On” that stops you cold: a Cornish-inspired fantasy of wildly rhapsodic character, fiercely defiant, as virtuosic as Balakirev’s Islamey or Chabrier’s Bourrée Fantasque and just as colorful. McLachlan tears into it with complete abandon.

The Kelvin Ensemble under what sounds like capable if not always perfectly polished direction (no maestro is credited) gives the concerto its due. Yes, there are moments where student-orchestra limitations show—some brass ragged edges, occasional ensemble wobbles. But the commitment never flags, and in a work receiving its first performance in six decades, that counts for more than flawless execution.

Dunelm’s engineering captures the live concerto reading with acceptable clarity, though the South African piano recordings from 1999 sound warmer and more detailed. Documentation is thorough, including three separate critical assessments (Colin Scott-Sutherland, Rob Barnett, and Phil Scowcroft) that sometimes repeat themselves but collectively build a persuasive case for Chisholm’s importance.

What emerges is a composer of genuine substance—eclectic, certainly, given his activities as conductor, lecturer, and administrator in Glasgow and later Cape Town, but with a distinctive voice that deserves hearing. The thought that ten operas, two symphonies, five ballets, and four concertos might languish unheard for another sixty years is intolerable. Heaven knows what the Edinburgh Festival people think about, indeed. This disc makes an essential case for a major reassessment, and McLachlan’s advocacy—both at the keyboard and in bringing this project to fruition—deserves the highest praise.