Music review: Lammermuir Festival Final Weekend, various venues, East Lothian

Friday was a day for vocal enthusiasts at the Lammermuir Festival. On the one hand, baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Christopher Glynn (*****) laid down a gauntlet to Lieder purists with Schubert’s Schwanengesang in English translation, then asking the audience’s opinion. In the evening, Scottish Opera (****) paired Mascagni’s Zanetto and Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret, an operatic twosome contrasting a fleeting love encounter with farcical domestic comedy.

Richard Burkhard (Count Gil) and Clare Presland (Countess Susanna) in Susanna's Secret

Williams’ recital – the last of three at Lammermuir featuring Schubert’s key Lieder collections – was a masterclass in vocal presentation, every word saturated in meaning, every musical note and phrase shaped with heartfelt inflexion and melting timbre. The crisp acoustics of Prestonkirk Parish Church, East Linton served the occasion perfectly, despite the need to pause mid-concert and silence the rogue hearing aid responsible for a wailing un-Schubertian counterpoint.

And the verdict on the English translations? With performances as transportive as these, and which stayed true to the expressive adventure of these delicious songs, few felt short-changed. Only better informed.

Bringing opera to such festivals is never easy, given venue requirements and cost. Lammermuir found the perfect solution in this Scottish Opera double bill, which employs a cast of two and three respectively, minimum set requirements (a simple raised staging), and the rear-positioned Scottish Opera Orchestra, which performed in St Mary’s Church, Haddington, with impulsive sweep under the heaving baton of David Parry.

It opened with the Scottish premiere of Zanetto, written in 1895 by Mascagni as he explored modernist alternatives to the old verismo tradition. Its two characters, Silvia (silken soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace) and Zanetto (Hanna Hipp, pictured) meet briefly, expressing a love that can never be. Hipp’s title role performance, hot and impetuous, stole the show.

In Wolf-Ferrari’s one-acter, Susanna’s secret is her enjoyment of a fly smoke, its lingering odour sending her unknowing husband into a fit of jealous rage. Rosie Purdie’s unfussy direction allowed her cast – the innocent coquettishness of Clare Presland as Susanna, a blustering Richard Burkhard as the Count, and the silently active Piran Legg as the dumb servant Sante – ample latitude to capture the chucklesome comedy and musical virtue of this lightweight farce.

Is all Mozart opera? That certainly seemed the case with a Saturday’s opener by the Maxwell String Quartet (****) of Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet in St Anne’s Church, Dunbar. As with their recent Haydn CD, the Classical mindset seems to suit them. For this was a performance of shimmering clarity and perceptive interaction, but mostly one that defined the musical spirit in terms of personification, as if each instrument was a player in a human drama. After a palate-cleansing interlude of Scottish folk arrangements, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden offered weightier opportunities, and a glimpse of the quartet’s more opulent persona.

They were joined by pianist Danny Driver later in Dirleton Kirk for Brahms’ Piano Quintet (***). There was something incomplete about this performance, moments where the music roasted intently in its own juices, but also where it floundered in impetus and direction. Ken Walton