East Neuk Festival
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Bowhouse, by St Monans
*****
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 that 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.
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