Sir Fôn Bach (2019)
9 tracks, 37 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes
Working in-office at Songlines magazine (as I have done since the beginning of the year) has meant that I have been listening to lots of music that I otherwise wouldn’t have even thought to pick up. I’ve been loving all the neat personal discoveries that this position has allowed me to make. Llio Rhydderch is one of them. I’d never heard of Rhydderch before, and when her album came in, it had no accompanying information. I could tell from her name and those of the album and the tracks that this was going to be Welsh music, but I expected it to be Welsh-language folk song. It wasn’t, but from the very beginning of the first track, I was completely captivated.
Rhydderch is the world’s foremost performer of the triple harp, a chromatic harp with three parallel rows of strings that is particular to Wales. She learnt the instrument completely by ear in true folk fashion, through watching, listening and copying, and she passes on the tradition in the same way. She is heavily invested in the preservation of this important Welsh heritage. To hear that puts one in mind of museum-music, pieces played the same way as they have been for centuries with reverential accuracy, but this album isn’t that, either.
Sir Fôn Bach is a completely solo album, just Rhydderch and her harp, and it is heavenly. The tone is so gentle and warm. The pace is never hurried, but never lags behind either. Each note is carefully chosen and executed in exactly the right way, all with a natural fluidity and supreme ease. The pieces in this set are based on traditional Welsh tunes or else composed in that same way, but Rhydderch is as much of an innovator as a preservationist. The music here is often somewhere between the extremes of folk and classical music, shifting to various points in that spectrum throughout the album. Different directions are taken, too. ‘Dychwelyd’ is an especially cinematic, impressionist piece; ‘Beth Yw'r Haf i Mi (Y Llawenydd a Fu)’ takes the ear to the realm of a medieval court; and the scales and techniques employed on ‘Anhawdd Ymadael’ are doubtlessly inspired by the Japanese koto.
If it weren’t for this album landing on my desk, I would never have stuck it into my CD player. The first impression formed by eye led me to believe this wouldn’t be my thing at all, and I was so wrong. I’ve barely been able to stop listening to it since. Sir Fôn Bach is without question my favourite album of 2019 so far, and I am delighted that I now get to explore the rest of this brilliant artist’s beautiful music.
Lovely to read this review. I'm glad Unesco no longer label people as Living Human Treasures, but if they did, Llio would be one. She has been producing a body of work that is of such emotional and technical mastery that you know as soon as you hear it that it will last forever. It also sounds Welsh, which is important to me as a Welshman, as our rich heritage is so threatened by globalism and fashions such as joining in with 'pan-Celtic' music. If you listen to the first three tracks on the album Enlli, for example, they couldn't have come from anywhere else on earth. And they are masterpieces. They take you away from whatever you were doing or thinking and arrest you. Shockingly little known outside the Welsh-speaking world, Llio is and will continue to be an inspiration to many harpists here. What a legacy she is gifting us.
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