Lammermuir Festival
Dunedin Consort, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts
St Mary’s Church, Haddington
Five stars
By Rowena Smith
In the seven years since it was founded, the Lammermuir Festival has established itself as a serious presence in the Scottish music calendar. As it has expanded the venues it encompasses have become ever more varied and adventurous (this year’s programme features a performance in the Concorde Hangar at the National Museum of Flight). However, the cornerstone of the festival surely remains the superb acoustic of St Mary’s Church in Haddington. Only fitting that this year’s opening concert showcase the venue in all its glory with a performance of one of the great masterpieces of early seventeenth-century choral music.
Monterverdi’s Vespers is a work on the threshold, at once both the culmination of the late Renaissance and a trailblazer for the emerging Baroque style. It is a choral work where every singer is a soloist and where the instrumentalists are as much voices as the choir. Its movements encompass declamatory psalm settings for choir and brass and lyrical motets for solo voice. Theatrical effects such as the ghostly off-stage echo are a reminder of Monteverdi’s role in the birth of opera.
This richness and variety shone through in this superbly stylish and joyful performance from Dunedin Consort and His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts directed from the organ by John Butt. The Vespers is a lengthy work, but here delivered with the Consort’s trademark energy, the momentum was never allowed to falter. There was plenty of space too in the lyrical movements, most memorably a tenor duet underpinned by Elizabeth Kenny’s richly resonant theorbo accompaniment, which was performed in the gallery of the church behind the audience to make full use of the acoustic. All told this was an exhilarating performance and it was rapturously received by the capacity audience in St Mary’s.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here