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Written in fRoots issue 234, 2002

LLIO RHYDDERCH
Enlli
Fflach Tradd CD250S (2002)

In reviews of Llio Rhydderch’s previous two CDs and in a feature about her in fRoots 189, I’ve probably used up most of the laudatory superlatives in the thesaurus. It’s impossible to over-state the importance of this triple-harpist from the island of Ynys Mon (Anglesey) in Welsh, indeed in British, music.
      And the music keeps pouring out of her. While the previous releases consisted of her rich variations on traditional melodies, this time the melodic shapes that have been storing up in her head and hands over a lifetime break free in their own right; most of this album consists of her own compositions. They’re classics, and it’s a masterpiece.
      She has extraordinary technical skill, the recording quality is luminous, but what makes her music so magnificent is that through every development one can surely hear her thought processes in her feeling for a melody, which always sings out across the cascades of notes and in the thoughtful turns of variations. Her timing is perfectly judged, perfectly linked to meaning, neither strict-tempo regimented nor formulaically precious classicised rubato.
      The central work of the album, comprising the first four tracks, is her Enlli Suite, which reflects on the landscape and history of the island of Ynys Enlli, or Bardsey, which is just off the tip of the slim finger of North Wales’ Lleyn Peninsula and is the resting place of many Celtic saints and a place of pilgrimage.
      Just four tracks are built on traditional tunes, to which her melodic inventiveness gives new life; listen to what she does with the well-known Nos Galan (more widely known as Deck The Hall With Boughs Of Holly) or Llwyn Onn (or The Ash Grove).
      The pictures aren’t just musical; the CD pack contains a free second disc, a DVD. It contains an eight-minute film of movie and still shots of the sea, wildlife and yellow-orange lichen encrusted rocks and buildings of Ynys Enlli, cut to the album’s opening track Enaid Enlli (Spirit of Enlli). Just the job for injecting a glimpse of fresh air and colour between grey computing moments, as is the slide-show sequence taken on the pilgrim route from Clynnog Fawr down the Lleyn to the island.  Unconnected to the Enlli theme, there’s a short TV feature told in ingeniously animated slate scratchings, narrated in Welsh with music played by Llio, about the 19th century astronomer John William Thomas and the slate carvings of the Ogwen Valley in North Wales.
      Also on the DVD are photos taken during the album’s recording in the light and airy Dreamworld studio near Wales’ south-western extremity. Some of those feature Llio’s teenage pupil Elin Wyn-Jones, a mightily promising, creative harper who joins her on two tracks of the album (and who is, incidentally, to be heard playing and interviewed on the BBC Radio 3 World On Your Street website).
      Elin is likely to be a significant player of the next generation in the long line of harpers, each passing on his or her art and techniques by direct contact. In that great chain Llio Rhydderch is destined to be one of the most famous names, and here she is, not a legendary name of the past like, say, Carolan in Ireland, but producing her finest work right now.
      Fflach Tradd is at www.fflach.co.uk.



© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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