Little Lights

Robertson is a harpist of high renown, having won all manner of prizes for her virtuosic clàrsach (Celtic harp) playing. Little Lights displays not only this but the versatility of her instrument. As well as plucking the strings and letting them resonate naturally, she feeds the sounds through pedals and, rather than using a drummer, creates her own percussion sounds by striking her harp with hands, beaters and brushes. While this is very much an album of harp music, Robertson is joined by Natalie Haas (cello) and Tim Edey (guitar, accordion), and they make important contributions.

The album opens in a burst of joie de vivre with ‘La Valse a Huit Ans’ by Benoit Bourque, yet Robertson is equally good and capturing the desolation in ‘The Wild Geese’, written to commemorate the flight of the Irish leaders after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. Robertson tackles the Turlough O’Carolan's tune ‘The Fairy Queen’ here, aided by Tim Edey's unobtrusive but essential guitar. Little Lights isn’t an exciting album as such, but its appeal lies elsewhere: perhaps it is what Congreve might have had in mind when he wrote that ‘music has charms to soothe a savage breast.’