For the first time since 2023, I came back to Aberdeenshire, for a concert that included a low-key, but personally significant première: a song cycle for voice and piano by Geoff Palmer, Voices of Midnight (I think the score says mezzo-soprano, but as long as there’s no ludicrous extremes, I take a 17th-century attitude to the question of voice types). With pianist Imogene Newland, I really enjoyed bringing this group of five songs to life. I gather one song had been performed previously, but although the whole cycle is about two decades old, various circumstances had prevented a complete performance, so I gather this was actually a “World Première”! (quotation marks quite deliberate…). Typical of Palmer’s approach is a dialogue of old forms and techniques with contemporary musical language, and a challenging but sympathetic approach to the instruments involved: both the pianist and I felt challenged, yet supported, by his understanding of the possibilities of voice and piano. The programme was grounded through Palmer’s performance of Britten’s Passacaglia, which was linked to Voices of Midnight through a collection of Britten’s songs for voice and piano: some folk-song settings, but also “A Charm”( from A Charm of Lullabies), which I always enjoy revisiting, and the early song, “Tit for tat”, in a mature revision…I sometimes think that Palmer’s style can be described as “if Britten and Messiaën had a baby”, but complicated with a number of other 20th-Century composers thrown in, and in this programme, the Britten connection was highlighted in a very sympathetic way. I highly appreciate Imogene Newland’s efforts in this performance: the elderly upright piano, though well-tuned, didn’t make her job easy for such subtle music, which was appreciated by pianist audience members! Combined with Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and an utterly cheesy-yet-effective arrangement of the tune sometimes known as “O Danny Boy” (“In Derry Vale”, in this incarnation) by Palmer, this was a concert where we hoped to convey connections to the audience that were strange, yet retrospectively obvious to us as musicians.