Music at Paxton
Music at Paxton announced their programme in April amid optimism. At last live music! Between now and then, things have got more difficult than we all anticipated, and Paxton have had to make a number of last-minute adjustments. Thanks to hard work behind the scenes by Angus Smith, Artistic Director and his team, the full programme took place last week. There was wonderful music-making and the sun shone!
This year, each performer gave two concerts of around one hour, in the afternoon and the evening. The Picture Gallery at Paxton House normally holds over 100, but one metre social distancing reduced that to 65. In early July the Scottish Government announced that one metre distancing would be delayed until 19th July. With admirable calm, and the cooperation of the Parish Church in Berwick, the first weekend’s concerts were moved a few miles over the Border.
So in the pews of the Cromwellian Church and with the cries of seabirds filling the pauses between songs, we heard James Gilchrist embark on his Winterreise, accompanied by Anna Tilbrook. This was an intense and moving performance. Schubert’s song cycle, written by a young man with youthful longing, proves ideally suited, both in music and words, to the more mature voice (Mark Padmore’s version was one of the highlights of the Wigmore Hall’s live-streamed sessions in June 2020.) Gilchrist makes us feel the effort involved in the journey, and the perils of winter – the dogs howling in the first song, and the wind “playing” in the second. Although the opening section of Der Lindenbaum is a respite from the cold and ice, it’s only temporary. Gilchrist relishes the sound of the German, emphasising the indignities forced on the traveller, when “die kalten Winde” blows his hat off - “der Hut flog mir von Kopfe.” Tilbrook’s accompaniment, exemplary throughout, here makes the most of the contrast between the lyricism of the opening the change to stormy weather, and the beautiful reflective last verse. Gilchrist has a powerful voice, and he certainly has all the notes. The declamatory passages in the lower register work particularly well, and if he sometimes uses uglier sounds to indicate effort, this is very much in the spirit of this performance and to be applauded.
Towards the end of the cycle, Das Wirtshaus, (the Inn) was my highlight. The traveller comes upon a graveyard and is tempted to join the dead there. The “cool inn” which invites the weary becomes a metaphor for the graveyard. It’s a song of despair and longing for death. Yet throughout, one of Schubert’s loveliest themes is repeated in the accompaniment, insistent and becoming heavier. Tillbrook’s playing emphasises the weighty notes, as the narrator realises that this inn has no room for him, and that he must trudge onwards on his trusty staff. The inn is “pitiless,” yet somehow the biblical imagery and that persistent phrase reasserts, if not optimism, certainly an indominable spirit. It takes an exceptional performance like Gilchrist’s and Tillbrook’s to help us understand these nuances.
We were at Paxton the next day – a smaller audience meant that the Brook Street Band were the first to present their concerts in the house this year. The all- woman baroque quartet were missing one of their performers, delayed in Germany, but the remaining players adapted their programme to fit. This was one of two performances this year which celebrated the history of Paxton. Angus Smith has an entertaining online lecture about the travels in Europe of Patrick Home, who commissioned Paxton House, and the band chose appropriate music from the eighteenth century. It was a sprightly and interesting hour, with well-chosen music to reflect the variety of styles and composers, including Frederick the Great, that Patrick Home might have come across. The band take their name from Handel’s London house, and as well as adult concerts also present programmes to introduce younger audiences to the music of Handel and his contemporaries. Playing baroque instruments in the heat is no joke, but the musicians coped admirably with the many tunings which the gut strings required.
My next concert was on Wednesday when I heard the Maxwell Quartet. They are regular visitors to Paxton, but I hadn’t heard them before. They’ve been together for seven years and have made their name both with their interpretations of the classical quartet repertoire, particularly Haydn, and their adaptations of Scottish folk tunes. Their programme featured Opus 74s, quartets by Haydn and Beethoven. The first was written in 1793, when Haydn returned to Vienna after his successful visit to London. The players have an energetic style which manages also to emphasise the small, interesting details of rhythm in the first movement, and the unusual harmonies in the Largo. A cheerful major-key Minuet contrasts with the more wistful Trio in the minor. Then onto the rollicking motion of the last movement, Allegro con brio, which gives the quartet its nickname, The Rider. The Maxwells take this at a fair lick, giving full force to the syncopations and changes of pace. Beethoven’s String Quartet in E flat, Opus 74 was composed in 1809, a productive year for Beethoven, despite the turmoil in Vienna caused by Napoleon’s occupation of the city. It is nicknamed the Harp after the harp-like pizzicato in the first movement. This is a more demanding work than the Haydn. The first movement ends with a dazzling coda for the first violin, although, as we’re told in the on-stage introduction, it’s not until the third movement that Beethoven “really goes mad.” The scherzo is very fast, with moves from Presto to prestissimo, and there’s some breath-taking musicianship. On a very hot afternoon, the Maxwell Quartet certainly stay in control, but I have to report that the audience does not – uniquely in my experience, we all miss the transition from the third to the fourth movement, and when the players reach the end, we sit patiently waiting for the next movement, and have to be told to applaud! Which we do heartily if a little shame-faced. The Maxwell’s new CD contains this work and the other Opus 74 quartets, interspersed with Scots tunes. No CD sales allowed as yet, but I now have it on order.
Elizabeth Watts and Sholto Kynoch perform in slightly cooler weather on Saturday 24th. Early booking has got us seats in the front row, and I’m reminded of Angus Smith’s remarks in his online introductory talk about the pleasures for both audience and performers in sharing the space at Paxton. Elizabeth Watts is straight from her directorial debut at the Buxton Festival, conducting “from the voice” in a programme with the English Consort. You can hear her interview with Sean Rafferty on In Tune on 14th July. She is modest about this achievement, saying that conducting in this way comes very naturally. Perhaps, but when she sings one of the Scarlatti songs from her Buxton set, we realise it may not be as easy as all that!
She also says that she believes her voice has got larger. I haven’t heard her sing for some time, and that was my initial impression. The Strauss selection was well-chosen to show off different facets of her voice. Her soprano is pure, clear and precise, but there is no sense of holding back here, and we got the full drama of Cecilie, as well as the contemplation of Morgen. There was the sudden joy of Wir Beide wollen springen (We both want to jump) and the humour in the character painting of Schlechtes Wetter. The set was helpfully broken up into sections with an introduction to each group of songs by Watts and her accompanist Sholto Kynoch. Kynoch also played two solo piano pieces. He explained this was to help the singer rest her voice in an evening of two concerts. But it’s a very nice idea anyway. Strauss’s ‘In Silent Forest’, a teenage work, gave us another facet of his personality, while the Greig ‘Wedding Day at Trold Haugen’, Kynoch said, helped the temperature to cool down after the Rachmaninov songs.
It was necessary. The set was astonishing in its intensity and sense of a no-holds barred commitment to the music. The Russian texts are from various sources, both Russian and French, male and female authors. There’s longing and despair, fear and loneliness. The teasing three verses by Victor Hugo, ‘They Answered’, starts with a cynical appraisal of how to escape the world’s problems, and ends in an affirmation of love. The last song ‘What happiness’ starts with a poetic description of a river reflecting the stars (like James Gilchrist, Elizabeth Watts relishes the sounds of the words) and moves into an ardent declaration of love. “I cannot hide my passion” says the narrator. Neither did the composer or our musicians.
The concert concluded with a set of Britten’s folk-song arrangements. Some are familiar – but none the worse for that. ‘O Waly, Waly’ with its slightly dissonant three chord rocking figure in the accompaniment is one of Britten’s best settings and Watts gives us a quiet bitter-sweet ending. Her comic talent is on show in ‘The Brisk Young Widow of Chester’, with the widow’s “refainment” and the yokel accent of the farmer. And despite the declaration at the end of ‘Oliver Cromwell’, “If you want any more you can sing it yourself,” they give us the Diva’s lament “Someone’s been sending me flowers.”
Paxton’s last concerts this year were another commemoration of local history. 2020 marked the bicentenary of the near-by Chain Bridge, and Concerto Caledonia gave us a belated celebration of the kind of music which might have featured on the triumphant day when this Union Bridge, a historic feat of engineering. was opened. Concerto Caledonia under their director David McGuiness on forte-piano have been around for some time, combining astute research into the music popular in Scotland and the UK as a whole in the 18th and 19th centuries, with cheerful performances on period instruments. We began with a tune by a Kelso musician to celebrate the victory of Camperdown, a painting of which could be seen in room we sat in. The music played in 1820 went back at least a century, and the band explored the Italian influences, especially the music of Corelli. Scots were influenced by Italian music, but also vice versa, as Gemignani’s versions of ‘Bonny Christy’ and ‘The Broom of Cowdenknowes’ illustrated. The quartet played with vigour and infectious enjoyment. They play for ceilidhs, and at other times it would have taken very little to persuade the douce Borderers to take the floor…
A splendid end to a wonderful week. At first, I revelled in the enjoyment of live music – at last! - but these performances were exceptional by any standards. A great welcome back for Music at Paxton.
Selected concerts available to stream here until 15th August.
