The Bagpipe Society

CD Review: Harta by Harta

Harta is a trio of fine musicians - Ross Calderwood on smallpipes, Christine Martin on nyckelharpa and Jack Evans on bouzouki, guitar and whistles. The album is 48 minutes long and consists of 12 tracks. Ross is an extremely accomplished pipe maker and plays a wide variety of different keys and woods: a D set in cherry, C sets in rowan and boxwood, a G set in yew a low F set and finally a single reed medieval set. The single reed medieval set sounds remarkably like a set of säckpipa in timbre and totally suits the tracks that it is played on.

Six of the tracks are Swedish tunes, one is Norwegian, one written by Christine, one from Arbeau’s Orchesography, one is from the Dixon Manuscript and two are Scottish. This gives for a wonderful breadth of style of genre.

The album starts with a couple of slängpolskas, the second of which is the very well known Hälleforsnäspolskan. With a range of an octave and a half it can be a challenge to come up with an arrangement of this melody for smallpipes that keeps the original melody intact. For me the standout track is the third one, the Valtrall is beautifully played by Ross on his ‘medieval pipes’.

Each track is wonderfully accurately played with a lovely sense of ensemble between the musicians. As you would expect with musicians of this calibre they jump from Scandinavian tunes to Scottish ones and back again with ease.

The album was recorded and produced by Jack himself and is beautifully recorded, the pipes and nyckelharpa are hard panned to each side, so if you favour one or other of the instruments make sure you sit closer to that speaker.

The album is available from Bandcamp: https://hartaskye.bandcamp.com/