The Usher Hall is in its now-annual “beanbag” mode, big cushions replacing the stalls seating. With the organ gallery behind the platform also sold to capacity, Norwegian fiddler Bjarte Eike’s Barokksolistene were performing “in the round” for their Edinburgh Festival debut.

This mostly-Scandinavian ensemble’s interpretation of “Baroque” is very much their own, the conceit of The Alehouse Sessions being that it is their recreation of the music found in the back rooms of London pubs when puritan Oliver Cromwell closed theatres and concert-halls. There, they say, the compositions of Purcell mixed fluidly with folk music, balladry and vernacular dance.

Skating lightly over how well the programme could withstand academic scrutiny, the result is enormous fun, highly dramatic and closer in spirit to a Celtic Connections gig than an EIF one.

Read More:

The nonet – five strings, two guitars, keyboard and percussion – are such capable musicians that Eike apparently leaves any decision on the set-list until immediately before the event, and those beanbags may have had a significant impact on what we heard on Thursday evening.

Although there was some up-tempo music at the start and a set of reels brought many of the audience to their feet at the end, this was a fairly laid-back night in the pub, with long, meandering versions of John Playford’s The Virgin Queen, from The English Dancing Master, the traditional Scots tale of amorous gypsy Johnny Faa, and Titania’s Lullaby from Purcell’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

With Eike the Master of Ceremonies, dancer and guitarist Steven Player and violinist and baritone singer Tom Guthrie completed the front line, the latter leading the audience participation in sea shanty Haul Away Joe. But it was tall violist Per Buhre whose high tenor was the most appealing voice onstage. His free interpretation of Robert Burns’s A Red, Red Rose was a special highlight, even if it dates from a century later than the era we were supposedly living in.

It also seems debatable whether the jazzy syncopations in solos by bassist Johannes Lundberg and percussionist Helge Norbakken were heard in late 17th century hostelries, but when Eike suggests that we “party like it’s 1699”, it’s long after his reference to the “utter political chaos, back then” had won wry chuckles of recognition from the contemporary bean-baggers.