East Neuk Festival
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Bowhouse, by St Monans
Keith Bruce
*****
SUPERB though Saturday evening’s unique event was, the 14th East Neuk Festival saved its best party tricks for the closing concert. With regular friend of the festival Christian Zacharias leaving the piano to direct the SCO, it began with a suite of the music from Rameau’s opera Les Indes Galantes which the conductor had arranged, and which ran from elegant airs with meaty stuff for the low strings to robust dances which had required recreation of bespoke period percussion.
With a work as familiar as Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, which followed, with SCO principal Maximiliano Martin, it became especially obvious what a remarkably clear acoustic this farm shed has. On standard instrument, the soloist was as vibrant and colourful as everyone expected.
A classy, compact lighting rig has complemented the fine sound at The Bowhouse this year, and it waved its own goodbye at the end of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, as, instead of leaving the stage, the musicians were plunged into darkness as their contributions faded from the witty finale.
If that might have seemed too downbeat a close, Zacharias immediately reprised the percussive dance from the Rameau to which he had added his own foot stomping - allowing for a reappearance of the popular “Chinese head” rhythm stick made especially for the occasion.
Just a few hours previously, at Kilrenny Church, the Elias String Quartet had concluded their visit to the festival with the sunnier sides of two famously dour men, Dmitri Shostakovich and Ludwig van Beethoven. The former’s concise tribute to his first wife in his 7th Quartet has the viola and cello suggesting a turbulent relationship but achieves a picture of contentment at its end, while Beethoven’s Opus 127 Quartet No 12, with its long, intense, slow movement, is also full of playfulness, and alternating muscularity and delicacy. The tonal blend of the Elias is quite distinctive and was perfect for both works.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here