Since lutenist Ronn McFarlane's first Dorian disc The English Lute Song was both critically and financially successful, it was all but inevitable that one of his subsequent discs for Dorian would feature lute works from elsewhere in the British Isles. And so here we have McFarlane's The Scottish Lute: 56 tunes drawn from four different seventeenth century Scottish collections. Performing on either lute or mandora (a smaller cousin of the lute pitched an octave higher), McFarlane is called upon to do more in The Scottish ...
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Since lutenist Ronn McFarlane's first Dorian disc The English Lute Song was both critically and financially successful, it was all but inevitable that one of his subsequent discs for Dorian would feature lute works from elsewhere in the British Isles. And so here we have McFarlane's The Scottish Lute: 56 tunes drawn from four different seventeenth century Scottish collections. Performing on either lute or mandora (a smaller cousin of the lute pitched an octave higher), McFarlane is called upon to do more in The Scottish Lute than he did in The English Lute Song because while the earlier disc programmed music with written out chords and counterpoints, the later disc programs music for which more often than not only the melody is notated. Thus while the earlier disc required more of him technically, this disc requires more of him interpretively. Here, McFarlane has to subordinate virtuosity to musicality, and because he is more of a musician than a showoff, the results are equal to the achievement of The...
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