New York Classical Review

Ruckus—the period-instruments ensemble that leaves listeners asking, “What period are we in?”—was up to its old and new tricks Sunday afternoon at Corpus Christi Church in Morningside Heights, in a lively program titled “Edinburgh Rollick.”

Front and center were the dance tunes of the legendary Scottish fiddler Niel Gow, a contemporary of the poet Robert Burns, whose birthday this concert celebrated. For reasons perhaps known only to Scots, Gow is sometimes called “the Scottish Corelli,” and so the Ruckus players reached back a century and pulled that groundbreaking Baroque composer-violinist out from behind the movie poster, as it were, to test that proposition.

The time-shifting even extended to the date of this concert, originally planned for close to Burns’s actual birthday last January, but rescheduled when a foot of snow shut down the city.

The geographical ground shifted under one’s feet as well, as Scottish country music was gathered under the rubric of Scotland’s capital city, and Ruckus pictured an eighteenth-century European music world jangling with the Turkish and Middle Eastern sounds of frame drum, riq (tambourine) and tabla. One was reminded that those staples of Baroque music the bassoon and theorbo (a long-necked lute), had Arabic origins as well.

As we know from Mendelssohn and Bruch, Scottish music itself became an exotic flavor on the Continent just after Gow’s and Burns’s heyday. On Sunday, in its eclectic way, Ruckus was scrubbing the Romanticism off Scottish reels just as other early-music groups have done for Bach and Handel.

Certainly the wonderfully “dirty” fiddling of Keir GoGwilt, with its slides, negotiable pitch and biting gut-string sound, was worlds away from Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. It wasn’t hard to imagine a room full of village pub patrons dancing the night away to his incisive fiddle, or (shifting again) the audience at Grand Ole Opry getting up in the aisles and doing likewise. On Sunday, one often had the sensation of hearing what put the roots in “roots music.”

One could also imagine a woman at that pub breaking into an old Scottish song like “Dh’èirich mi moch, b’fheàrr nach d’ dh’èirich” (I arose early, would that I hadn’t) in the kind of reedy, untutored voice that Fiona Gillespie adopted for this performance. However, her spot-on intonation and sensitive blend with GoGwilt’s violin hinted at the art behind this “artless” rendering.

Corelli’s ghost crashed this cèilidh with the A major Sonata for violin and basso continuo from his Op. 5—and fit right in surprisingly well, with the non-vibrato singing tone of the slow movements and the flashy bow work of the fast ones, not to mention his use of expressive dissonance. A discreet boost from Zafer Tawil’s Middle Eastern percussion also helped the old Italian join this Scottish party.

The concert proceeded in layers like a pan of lasagna: a “set” of Gow fiddle tunes by GoGwilt and the ensemble, a vocal by Gillespie, a movement or two of Corelli, and repeat until the pan is full.

Gillespie in particular varied the mix, singing Burns’s famous poem “O my Luve is like a red, red rose” to a Gow melody, tenderly reciting Burns’s “Now westlin winds” to GoGwilt’s discreet violin obbligato, and, next to last on the bill, singing the ballad “The Lover’s Tasks” over the ensemble playing Corelli’s Variations on “La Folia”—a virtuous collision of classical and folk if there ever was one. (The last verse began, “O are ye goin’ tae Scarborough Fair/Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme…”—but there was no sign of two 1960s folksingers.)

Following that, in good bandstand fashion, bassoonist Clay Zeller-Townsend introduced himself and all the other able players, including, besides the abovementioned, Doug Baliett on double bass and viola da gamba, Elliot Figg on harpsichord and organ, and Paul Holmes Morton on guitar and theorbo.

Then one more Niel Gow set sent the audience on its way dancing, at least inwardly, to a Strathspey reel.

Music Before 1800 presents Didem Basar, kanun, and assisting artists in “Levantine Rhapsody,” a program of Turkish and Western classical music, 5 p.m. May 31 at Corpus Christi Church, 529 W. 121st Street. mb1800.org