Alasdair Beatson eager for Paxton Festival return

Beatson says the festival gives him freedom to devise his programmes. Picture: Contributed.

ONE of the great joys of being a regular guest artist at the annual Music at Paxton Festival, says Perth-born pianist Alasdair Beatson, is the opportunity it gives him to do the kind of music he loves best in a setting he describes as “beautiful, intimate and inspiring”.

This year’s Festival, its daily diet of chamber music filling once again the elegant Regency picture gallery at Paxton House near Berwick-upon-Tweed, runs from 18-27 July, and boasts among its artistic line-up a glorious mixture of young and established talent.

As well as concerts by the seasoned Edinburgh Quartet (with clarinettist Maximiliano Martin in Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet), the Scottish Ensemble, a Baroque collective led by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, and the entertaining percussionist double act O Duo, newer faces include exciting young Venetian pianist Alessandro Taverna (playing Rachmaninov’s Preludes) and the stylish Chiaroscuro Quartet in Mozart and Haydn.

But it’s Beatson who starts it all off, joined in three recitals throughout this Friday and Saturday by two of his closest collaborators, violinist Katherine Gowers and cellist Adrian Brendel, in music by Schumann, Dvorak, Faure, Rachmaninov, Janacek and Kodaly. “The Festival gave me almost complete freedom in devising these programmes,” he says. “So I went for what I most enjoy: a mix of late Romantic, early 20th-century French and East European repertoire.”