"The songs here are shared between soprano Lisa Milne and
baritone Roderick Williams, who capture perfectly the fragile
sensitivity of the best songs"
The Guardian
"An engaging introduction"
The Knowledge
The Guardian, 27th April 2007 ***
FG Scott, Francis George
Scott (1880-1958), was a new name to me. Born in Hawick, in the Scottish
borders, he was mostly self-taught as a composer, and worked for many
years as an English teacher. Among his pupils was one Christopher Grieve,
better known as the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, whose poetry was to provide the
texts for many of Scott's finest songs. Sixteen of those are among the 32
songs on this thoughtfully compiled disc, which also includes settings of
Robert Burns and William Soutar among others. MacDiarmid's verse appears
to have been a fulcrum of Scott's finest music in the same way that the
songs of his younger contemporary Gerald Finzi were centred on his
fascination with Thomas Hardy.
In some of the numbers here Scott's idiom
does echo that of English pastoralists Finzi and Vaughan Williams, but in
others his musical language is much more forward-looking. The finest
MacDiarmid settings here - Moonstruck, The Eene Stane, The Watergaw - are
angular and often intensely chromatic, showing that Scott knew his early
Schoenberg, while an interest in Bartok inspired his research into
Scottish folk music. The songs here are shared between soprano Lisa Milne
and baritone Roderick Williams, who capture perfectly the fragile
sensitivity of the best songs.
Andrew Clements
The Times, 21st April 2007 ***
The pianist and radio presenter Burnside indulges his
passion for the obscure with this disc of 32 songs by the little-known
Scottish composer (1880 - 1958). He revels in the crisp, expressive lyrics
by the nationalist poet Hugh MacDiarmid (glossary supplied) and Robbie
Burns. The soprano Milne ranges from the soft radiant motherliness of Milkwort
to eerie wonder in Moonstruck, and is robust and occasionally
shrill in the rabble-rousing in The Sauchs. The baritone Williams
tempers his mellow tone with righteous anger in Lourd on My Hert,
and delivers doom-laden awe in Watergaw and sardonic humour in My
Wife's a Wanton. An engaging introduction.
Rick Jones
MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year 2007
F.G. who? Get Moonstruck and find out. One of the best things to come out of Scotland since whisky.
