Concert review: Dunedin Consort and Players

St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington * * * *

BEFORE this closing concert of the Lammermuir Festival, the organisers proudly announced that this year’s event has been a resound***othing short of remarkable, but the “smiles on people’s faces as they left the concerts” have apparently convinced Hugh Macdonald and James Waters that Lammermuir has a place in the busy festival market.

Those smiles continued on Sunday night, when the Dunedin Consort and Players delivered a sumptuous programme of Bach and Handel. Dunedin closed last year’s Lammermuir Festival, and although that’s only two years in a row, it already feels like a comfortable tradition.

Director John Butt is a man whose exuberance knows no bounds; with one hand on the organ or harpsichord, the other expressively pulls the very best out of these consummate singers and players. Particular praise goes to the passionate playing of Dutch violinist Cecilia Bernardini (especially during Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor) and the pure and engaging voices of Edinburgh-born soprano Susan Hamilton and Austrian alto Margot Oitzinger.

But essentially this was a group effort, and the “smiles” Macdonald and Waters spoke of came most readily when the musicians and singers united in Handel’s fiendishly difficult Dixit Dominus. A work which gave solo vocalists a chance to shine, and made beautiful use of St Mary’s resonant acoustics as ten perfectly matched voices came together in glorious harmony.