News: Music at Paxton

‘Music at Paxton’, the Scottish Borders festival of chamber music, begins in less than five weeks on 16th July.  Last weekend as a Friend of Paxton I attended my first indoor concert in fifteen months when British Canadian soprano, Barbara Cole Walton, and Polish pianist, Michal Gajzler, performed Lieder by Hugo Wolff and Debussy and operatic arias from Handel’s ‘Alcina’, Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan Tutte’ and Massenet’s ‘Cendrillon’.  Both are now based in Scotland and it was their first recital since last March.  I think all of us, including the musicians, felt a deal of emotion during the beautiful ‘Tornami vagheggiar’ , which began the programme. They are accomplished artists, and an hour later when they finished with their flamboyant version of ‘Poor Wand’ring One’ from ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, the masked and distanced audience did their best to replicate thunderous applause! 

This week Paxton have put on sale online passes for a several festival concerts.  Generous emergency funding from Creative Scotland and EventScotland has been put in place to film these. For £12 (£7 concessions) a whole family can watch the Gould Trio, Imogen Cooper, the Maxwell String Quartet and soprano Elizabeth Watts, with pianist Sholto Kynoch.  The concerts can be viewed up to Sunday 15th August, and Paxton are encouraging supporters who can’t visit in person to buy passes for themselves and as gifts for friends in Scotland and further afield. 

Full details of the passes and of availability for the live performances from 16th to 25th July can be found at: www.musicatpaxton.co.uk