VoxCarnyx

There are sure signs of growing confidence as live performance returns at increasing levels to Scotland’s summer music festivals. Lammermuir Festival is the latest to announce a comeback live-audience programme, with an astonishing 37 concerts in numerous venues across East Lothian, running from 7-20 September. 

New and familiar faces are among the comprehensive line-up, from regular Lammermuir artists The Dunedin Consort, the Scottish Chamber and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras, Scottish Opera, pianist Danny Driver, baritone Roderick Williams and Maxwell Quartet, to such alluring new faces as American pianist Jeremy Denk, and Tom Poster’s versatile Kaleidoscopic Chamber Collective.

Denk marks his Festival debut with an artistic residency of four concerts, surveying Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier Book 1 in the first of two solo recitals, joining forces with members of the SCO for Schubert’s Trout Quintet, and with the fuller SCO in a Festival closing concert (20 Sep) featuring concertos by Mozart.
Poster’s ensemble, which features in two programmes for piano and winds, covers repertoire from Mozart and Brahms to Tailleferre and Robert Simpson.

Scottish Opera continues its now perennial Lammermuir presence in a lightly staged live production in St Mary’s Church, Haddington, of Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte (9 Sep) with the same lively young cast, full orchestra and chorus that featured in its recent filmed version.

The same venue hosts a panoply of choral music, from a rare performance by Tenebrae of Poulenc’s La Figure Humaine, and a feast of Renaissance protest songs by the Marian Consort, to two appearances by the The Gesualdo Six, one of which celebrates the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin des Prez (11 Sep).

Lammermuir has teamed up with Radio 3 (7-10 Sep) to broadcast live four opening song recitals by Robert Murray and Alisdair Hogarth, James Atkinson and Sholto Kynoch, Catriona Morison and Malcolm Martineau, and Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton.

Vocal music is also the focus in Dunedin Consort’s programme of Monteverdi madrigals (15 Sep) under the direction of tenor Nicholas Mulroy. The wider field of song centres on a semi-staged setting of Hugo Wolf’s Italian Songbook (12 Sep), Wagner’s Wesendonck Songs (19 Sep) and Schoenberg’s distilled chamber version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (13 Sep). Singers include Joshua Ellicott, Susan Bickley and Roderick Williams.

Ellicot is the featured soloist in the BBC SSO’s final weekend programme, singing Britten’s Nocturne under the baton of former SCO bassoonist Peter Whelan. Chamber recitals range from a late night concert by Japanese violinist Coco Tomita (18 Sep) and accordion recitals by the young Scots star Ryan Corbett. Early music is brought to life in The Apollo of the Theorbo, featuring theorbo player Alex McCartney (11 Sep), while new music – James Dillon’s RPS Award-winning Tanz/Haus – is the focus of Red Note Ensemble’s programme at Dunbar Parish Church (15 Sep). 

Members of the SCO are again present in a programme of piano quartets (11 Sep) with Edinburgh pianist Susan Tomes. Violinist Chloë Hanslip and pianist Danny Driver feature in three morning concerts at Holy Trinity, Haddington (13-15 Sep).

All concerts will adhere to prevalent Covid guidelines, co-directors Hugh Macdonald and James Waters insist. “Careful thought has gone into the audience experience and we are confident that we are presenting a carefully managed and rich series of concerts.”

Full programme details are available at www.lammermuirfestival.co.uk