Cellist Caroline Dale and pianist composer Gavin Greenaway are long-time collaborators in film music and now release a new album Skylines which received a showcase concert launch at King’s Place, appropriately dedicated to the late George Fenton. The programme comprised extracts from the CD, together with examples of their earlier work. Video material accompanied most of the numbers which either directly or obliquely spoke to the themes evoked.
In plain terms most of the numbers are songs for cello – many of them with a tone of soaring ecstacy or elegy, and with an arpeggiated accompaniment underneath to provide a shifting harmonic foundation. So Doriel’s Air, at the start, depicted a bird gliding over Skye, together with appropriate mountain views. In contrast, Skylines, the title number, was faster, with an urban edginess, and good synergy between music and video material. In other numbers, the composition was at its most memorable when there was a story to tell rather than simply an atmosphere to evoke, as you would expect given the backdrop of film music for both members of Cloud Chamber. So a dialogue of lovers gave a natural frame to Theme for Héloïse, and Voyager, with which the evening ended offered a fine sequence of meditations on the space probe, and what it signifies. But there was a lot of similarity in tempo, rhythm and mood in some of the material where there was no forward narrative to provide a structure or development. An exception that proved the point was On Rannoch Moor – a tripartite piece that began with an eloquent statement of the theme, a delightful bluesy interlude for piano to follow for constrast, and then a rhapsodic variation with more urgent accompaniment underneath to conclude.
There is, therefore, the danger of what you might call the ‘John Rutter problem’. There is a distinctive style here that both artists have honed over many years of working together. When you have a tried and tested and original formula, you do need to guard against repetition of too many stylistic tropes, and that was not always the case. The second half offered more contrast though, especially with a selection of pieces from Greenaway’s piano suite Woven, and the movement Merlin’s Hat from Dale’s work Such Sweet Thunder. Both these sections involved electronic overlays that deftly complicated the result, and the layering of six cellos in Merlin’s Hat was indeed eerily evocative.
In various ways the concert under-sold the material, though. There were technical mishaps, and in the second half I was distracted by a noisy fan that was turned on to reduce the heat in the room. On listening to the CD at home I formed a more favourable impression. Some of the most engaging and differentiated pieces there had not been included in the concert programme, and all told I would thoroughly recommend the disc. As you would expect from players of this calibre, the quality of the playing and the intimacy of the collaboration is impeccable on both disc and in live performance. There is a discreet, confiding inwardness to the songs, genuine melodic and harmonic invention, imaginative flair, and a rueful mellowness that is very apt for autumn evenings of wistful meditation.
Composers & Performers: Caroline Dale & Gavin Greenaway
October 12 2026
2 hrs with interval
Photo Credit: Finlay Greenaway