Classical and Opera: Full of Eastern promise

Published on Tuesday 7 July 2009 19:16

'ALL festivals stand and fall by their first year. There's always a chance they'll go on, but you can never be too sure." These words were spoken with well-earned smugness by East Neuk Festival (ENF) director Svend Brown on Sunday at a private function to mark the final day of this year's event, the most imaginatively programmed in its glowing five-year history.

Later that afternoon, a capacity crowd spilled out of the final concert in Crail's picturesque Parish Church. "Absolutely brilliant, on our own doorstep and for comparative peanuts", shouted one Fifer to his giddy entourage.

By "peanuts", he was possibly referring to ticket prices, for such eminent artists as pianist Christian Zacharias, baritone Stephan Loges, the Leipzig and Doric String Quartets, even the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO), hardly come cheap. In prestige festival terms, East Neuk is as serious a player as Edinburgh or St Magnus.

Zacharias and the Leipzig String Quartet had just woven their magic in Schumann's Op.44 Quintet for piano and strings, which reinforced the growing opinion, over two blistering festival appearances, that this all-male Leipzig ensemble – former members of the illustrious Gewandhaus Orchestra – are something very special indeed.

Integrity and precision are their watchwords, combined with an intense synergy of technique and tone that manifested itself in performances of immense depth and harnessed euphoria.

But why the relatively small-scale climax to the 2009 Festival? After all, previous years had marked this moment with a full-scale symphonic assault by the entire SCO. But somehow this new-found formula struck a more satisfying chord, a scale of music that seemed to define a natural symbiosis of setting and content. By its very nature, the East Neuk offers little scope for grand gestures.

The underlying emphasis this year was the alluring intimacy of fine chamber music, either in the bright acoustics of Crail, the cliff-edge mystique of the diminutive St Monan's Church, or the isolated candlelit charm of Dunino Church, where lutenist Jacob Heringman played a mystical late-night coupling of Renaissance classics by Francesco Canova da Milano and John Dowland – referring to these seminal figures with premeditated relish as "Frankie and Johnny". How refreshing to find an early music specialist with a contemporary sense of humour.

And how endlessly exciting to experience a packed weekend of concerts capitalising on the various permutations arising from the simultaneous presence of so many captive musical stars.

Take Friday's pot-pourri with Zacharias, the Leopold String Trio and SCO flautist Alison Mitchell. Other than Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet, K478 – an ensemble graced by the clinical intensity of violinist Isabelle van Keulen and opulent viola tone of Lawrence Power – the emphasis was on miniature variety. Zacharias and Mitchell unwrapped the bitter-sweet delicacies of Poulenc's Sonata for piano and flute with endearing charm, while she singly imbued Varse's unaccompanied Density 21.5 with trance-like magic. Zacharias, the centrifugal force, went solo in Haydn's E flat Sonata. His trick, as always, is to make the piano sing. All that his delicate and lyrical deliverance of the Scarlatti-like E flat sonata lacked were actual words.

No shortage of these the following evening as he accompanied Stephan Loges in a selection of songs from Schubert's Schwanengesang, all expressed with unflinching directness by the powerful baritone. Zacharias' solo performance of Schubert's substantial A major Sonata was a triumph of tonal exploration. He uses the soft pedal obsessively these days, but quite unobtrusively and to exquisite, subdued effect.

If the Leipzig Quartet epitomised the underlying Germanic strain of the Festival, its antithesis lay in the more openly demonstrative Doric Quartet. I caught only one of the young British Quartet's appearances.

In Haydn's eccentric Quartet in G major and Brahms's warm-blooded Clarinet Quintet (with SCO clarinettist Maximilano Martin) they demonstrated a willingness to take musical risks – a slightly off-the-wall bravado – and generally got away with it.

Away from the relative safety of the core classics – including an afternoon stroll by members of the SCO through Wagner's Siegried Idyll in its original chamber format – the tropical weather was a Godsend to those intrigued by Martin Parker's electronic outdoors commission Out There – three electronic soundscapes to be experienced on the hoof via MP3 player or iPod at prescribed outdoor locations: St Fillan's Cave, Crail Harbour and Dunino Den.

It was a bold experiment, and one leaving itself open to infinite reaction. One festival-goer found St Fillan's Cave – a dank and awesome grotto set amid the harbourside cottages of Pittenweem – a horrifyingly dark experience. No wonder; she apparently forgot to put the lights on.

Personally, I found it hard to connect Parker's slow-moving elemental soundtrack to the cold, bare solitude of the cave. Over at Crail Harbour, though, the "headphones music" was more openly interactive with the hustle and bustle (mainly seagulls) around me, while the hidden magic of Dunino Den, with it history of pagan rituals, calls for a more intimate response, which Parker captures in a quietly menacing way.

The downloads are still available on the festival website – www.eastneukfestival.com – so if you're planning a trip to Fife over the summer, there's still time to give it a try. But how's this for a sign of confidence? No sooner was this year's festival over than Brown was telling us all about next year's plans.

Expect the Tallis Scholars singing that giant hybrid of the Renaissance, Tallis's 40-part motet Spem in Alium along with a festival choir especially assembled for the occasion.

The Belcea and Elias String Quartets will perform the complete Britten quartets in "three churches by the sea", the fascinating American pianist Nicholas Angelich will be there, and yet another unlikely venue will be explored – an old airfield cinema near Crail.

The imagination of this festival doesn't stop there. In the spirit of the moment, Brown voiced his long-term aspiration "to explore opera" in the East Neuk. How and what is anybody's guess. But the likelihood is it will happen. Watch this space.