Lammermuir Festival
Jeremy Denk/Maxwell Quartet
Dunbar Parish Church/Dirleton Kirk
Five stars
A RETURN visit by American pianist Jeremy Denk was the star turn of the opening weekend of the 15th Lammermuir Festival in East Lothian.
Denk began with a celebration of the 150th birthday of composer Charles Ives that continued his partnership with violinist Maria Wloszczowska, originally forged at Lammermuir.
Ives’ four violin sonatas - virtuoso pieces for both players - would be a demanding listen on their own, but here they were interspersed with choral and wind band contributions of the maverick composer’s source material.
Local amateur choir Garleton Singers and East Lothian schoolchildren on brass, wind and percussion were the ideal choice for the exercise - the singers suitably congregational and the instrumentalists sassy and streetwise. Their Sousa marches and revivalist hymns could then be identified as themes in the complex, sophisticated writing for the duo.
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For his own solo recital at Dunbar Parish Church on Saturday, Denk presented an equally inventive first half that showcased female composers, living voices (Tania Leon, Missy Mazzoli, Meredith Monk, Phyllis Chen) teamed with predecessors including Clare Schumann, Cecile Chaminade, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Amy Beach.
The juxtapositions offered both reflections and contrasts, the contemporary sometimes interrogating the past. A brilliant miniature by Seeger following Louise Farrenc’s gorgeous Melodie in A-flat major summed up the power of the programme.
The spirit of Clara Schumann floated over the music after the interval when Denk played the 4 Klavierstucke of Johannes Brahms, and Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C. If the former was a demonstration of what the virtuoso pianist knew her instrument could do, the latter was a very different expression of unfiltered admiration.
As it happened, Clara was also evoked by the Maxwell Quartet at Dirleton earlier in the day when they were joined by violist Scott Dickinson of the BBC SSO and cellist Su-a Lee from the SCO for Brahms’s Sextet No 2, which also remembers her. With eloquent exchanges between all the players, there was some rich counterpoint from the pairs of violas and cellos to the sparkling playing of Maxwell Quartet leader Colin Scobie.
Scobie was also on fire in the finale of Mendelssohn’s final quartet, which preceded the Brahms. A harrowing expression of the composer’s grief at the death of his sister, Fanny, it can have had few performances as fervently precise in every detail of rhythm and dynamics as this one.
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