New Cd Release: "the Wreck Of The Hera"

[StuartEstell]

Hello all,

 

I'm pleased to announce my latest release, which is a collaboration with the poet Lucy Newlyn, and is a setting of her long ballad, "The Wreck of the Hera", recorded in the chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

 

Part one is accompanied on my 1927 Wheatstone Maccann duet, parts two and three on my Jeffries system duet.

It's available as a download with digital booklet, or in a limited edition of 100 physical copies - book & CD with immediate download.

You can listen to the whole of part two on Bandcamp - the source of the tune for this is Nic Jones's "Clyde Water".

https://lachenaliamusic.bandcamp.com/…/the-wreck-of-the-hera

[Sidsqueezer]

interesting as I have dived on the wreck Hera. Nice dive. Nice Tune.

[Mike Franch]

Being an EC player, I'm not sure I would understand the answer, but why did you use two different systems in your recording? Did you use two instruments to obtain different sound qualities, and the the different fingering systems were just incidental (i.e., one of your 'tinas happened to be one, and one the other) or is there something about the fingering itself that prompted you to use them?

[StuartEstell]

Hello Mike,

 

It's partly to do with tone, and partly to do with the nature of the arrangements.

 

The first part, on which I play my Wheatstone Maccann, makes great use of the fact that my Maccann has an octave and a half of overlap between the hands, so I have both hands doing textural things in the same register (think "In Paradisum" from the Fauré Requiem - it's a similar sort of accompaniment). That's simply not possible on the Jeffries duet as the overlap between the hands is only a 5th.

 

I tend to think of the Jeffries duet as being a bit more rock'n'roll, hence using it for part two - and I needed its more plaintive tone for the final part, which uses the tune for Lord Franklin, unaccompanied, at both ends. The Wheatstone is wooden-ended and a bit less melancholy-sounding.

Edited November 11, 2014 by StuartEstell