The ‘Angel of Australia’ Mirusia, featured soprano solist with André Rieu, similarly showcases exquisiteness in the stunningly evocative ‘My Love is Like a Red Red Rose’, Robert Burns’ 1794 song, and also in duet with Tenor Gregory Moore in ‘Sailboat’. Led by charismatic conductor Sean Boyle, The Queensland Pops Orchestra expresses the simple and swelling strings of the hymn-like Scottish folk turn ‘O Waly Waly’ (The Water is Wide), making it a beautiful Act One highlight. Although interesting in itself, this highlights the show’s wanting for further information about the songs and their place in either Scottish musical heritage or history, if only all allow audiences to appreciate their curation together, as worked so well in Paul Kelly and Camille O’Sullivan’s, journey through Irish poetry, “Ancient Rain” earlier this year. Everyone is given a chance to shine as the show pipes and prances through all range of traditional and more-contemporary Celtic fair, including joyful surprises like a ‘Scottish Piano Rhapsody’ inset with ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in a nod to the unofficial Australian anthem’s origin in the Scottish song ‘Thou Bonnie Wood Of Craigielea’. There’s a fiddler too as mischievous Marcus Holden shares his contemporary violin skill in a full-of-character solo number, the Irish ballad ‘Boolavogue’, commemorating the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

From there, things proceed with massed pipes, drums and even highland dancers filling the stage area afront the Queensland Pops Orchestra and QPAC choir in a celebration of the all things Scottish. It is a sound steeped in the ideals of Scottish history and cultural pride, derived from the Scottish soldier’s traditional call to the end of the day, in this case marking the start of the international smash hit “Scotland the Brave” from world champion bagpipe player Andrew Fuller, the Pipe Major and founding member of the City of Adelaide Pipe Band.

It is a fitting beginning in its tribute to the traditional last act of the annual Edinburgh Military Tattoo, when the lights are extinguished on the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade and a spotlight picks out a piper high up in the castle battlements. “Scotland the Brave” starts with surprise, with a lone piper playing an eerily-beautiful lament from the heights of QPAC’s Concert Hall organ.

Andre rieu bagpipe player