Lammermuir Festival: Dunedin Consort La Vendetta | Mahan Esfahani Plays Bach Concertos
Crichton Collegiate Church - 17/09/23
Dunedin Consort - John Butt, director
The penultimate day of the Lammermuir Festival 2023 was my last reviewing day, and I attended two concerts. The first was in Crichton Collegiate Church at 11am, and featured the Dunedin Consort, while the second took place at Dunbar Parish Church at 7.30pm.
The Dunedin Consort, under the direction of Professor John Butt, presented a programme of baroque music by women composers. A select band of two violins, a viola da gamba, a theorbo and either chamber organ or harpsichord, depending on the nature of the music, were joined by the soprano, Nardus Williams, in a packed Crichton Collegiate Church. I would guess that none of the music played was familiar to the majority of the audience, and it was a delight to hear this selection of songs, both sacred and secular, along with some excellent instrumental sonatas, performed as ever superbly by the Dunedins. The instrumentalists – Huw Daniel and Kinga Ujszászi (violin), Jonathan Manson (viola da gamba), Alex McCartney (theorbo), with John Butt (chamber organ and harpsichord) – playing on original instruments, were consistently fabulous; expressive, virtuosic and committed. Their performances of sonatas and trio sonatas by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729) and Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) were outstanding, with both violinists playing with glorious fervour and elan, matched by intricate and subtle continuo work. Jacquet de la Guerre seems to have been a fascinating character, starting off as a child prodigy at the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, and having a long career as both player and composer, including being the first woman composer to have an opera performed at the Opéra de Paris.
The rest of the programme was a series of songs in Italian and Latin, written by women, in which the protagonist burns with desire either for union with Jesus or with more earthly lovers, seeking forgiveness, release and eventually, revenge! Some of these composers were nuns, while others were highly paid musicians at either Florentine or Venetian courts. The nuns, Rosa Giacinta Badalla and Claudia Sessa were in Milan while Bianca Maria Meda was a Benedictine nun in Pavia, and their deep longing for Jesus, in language that would otherwise be rather wordly, seems somewhat strange to modern ears. The courtiers, Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini, were able to express themselves in more earthy tones (although still in courtly love language), and Strozzi’s ‘Hor che Apollo’ is an extended cantata of unrequited love, passionate and heartfelt, and her ‘La Vendetta’ is a desperate cry for revenge.
All this passion was presented in the cool performance of Nardus Williams, one of the most sought after young sopranos around. Her presentation, sung from memory, was for me lacking in emotion or energy and, indeed, her performance radiated a glacial froideur that left me similarly cold. Virtually immobile, she appeared totally uninvolved with any of the passionate music she was singing. It seems to me that her voice is not really suited to baroque music (her CV is full of dramatic roles like Mimi, Fiordiligi, Micaëla and Donna Elvira) with its fast coloratura and straight, vibrato-less notes, and I wonder if she may leave the baroque world behind fairly soon?
I have to say here that this view was not shared by the majority of the audience in the church, who whooped loudly and stamped their feet in appreciation at the end, but I can only comment on what I hear and see.
Dunbar Parish Church - 17/09/23
Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Mahan Esfahani
In the evening, we moved on to Dunbar Parish Church for a concert of Bach harpsichord concertos, played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the charismatic Iranian/American harpsichordist, Mahan Esfahani. What a performer!
This was my last concert in the Lammermuir Festival this year (Donal Hurley is covering the final show on Monday at St Mary’s, Haddington), and it was a stunner! Like St Mary’s, but far more recently, Dunbar Parish Church has risen from the ruins to become a great venue for larger scale concerts, and it was perfect for this celebration of the genius of J S Bach.
It would appear that he, practically single-handedly, invented the concerto for harpsichord, firstly in his Brandenburg Concerto No 5 (BWV1050), where the instrument is given a prominence never before heard in music, and then in his set of six concerti for harpsichord dating from 1738.
Mahan Esfahani has dedicated his career to rehabilitating the harpsichord to the mainstream of concert instruments, both through his own performances and commissions from contemporary composers. I have been lucky in my career to work closely with some of the great harpsichordists of the last few years, notably John Butt, John Kitchen and the wonderful Trevor Pinnock, and I think we can safely add the name of Mahan Esfahani to that elite list. Both his playing, which is phenomenal, virtuosic and expressive, and his personality, which shone through in his playing and his introductions, reveal a supreme talent, and we were privileged to hear his performances of the Bach concerti in Dunbar. Mr Esfahani has been the Artist in Residence this year at the Festival and has proved to be enormously popular.
This concert was largely sold out, and the appreciative audience was treated to playing of utter brilliance from Mr Esfahani and the SCO. It was fascinating to hear Bach played on modern instruments, especially after hearing the Dunedin Consort on original instruments in the morning. I am usually a stickler for baroque music at baroque pitch with original instruments, but when the orchestra play with such style and understanding of period performance as did the SCO, the result can be marvellous, as it was here. Playing on a modern version of an older harpsichord, made in 1992 by Reinhard von Nagel in Paris, Mr Esfahani took us through the variations on the concerto for harpsichord developed by Bach, culminating in the performance of perhaps the greatest of them all, his 1st Concerto (BWV 1052) in D Minor, as well as playing a piece of variations on ‘Les Folies d’Espagne,’ by Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel (born 1714). Directing the orchestra from the keyboard, Mr Esfahani treated us to playing of stunning virtuosity as well as deep sensitivity, which had the audience in raptures. As an encore, he played a Ground attributed to Henry Purcell, which was delicate and beautiful.
Thus my experience of this year’s Lammermuir Festival came to an end, and I must again thank the organisers, principally the Artistic Directors, James Waters and Hugh Macdonald, and all the staff and the helpers who make this festival such a delight. The possibility that all their work could be nullified by the cold hand of bureaucracy through Creative Scotland’s funding decisions, should be resisted at all costs, and I sincerely hope that sensible voices prevail in the coming months, to ensure that the Lammermuir Festival 2024 goes ahead with full support, enabling great music to be available for everyone in East Lothian and beyond.
Cover photo: Kaja Smith
