East Neuk Festival

Ensemble Marsyas/Tullis Russell Mills Band

The Bowhouse, by St Monans, Fife

Keith Bruce

four stars

His “Gran Partita” serenade for 13 winds was the beginning of Mozart’s love affair with the 18th century’s new lead instrument, the clarinet, which would go on to produce the gorgeous melodies of his Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet Concerto. They may look strange to us now, but the composer would have recognised the four period clarinets that led most of the music in this performance by bassoonist Peter Whelan’s Ensemble Marsyas, Christine Sticher’s double bass in the midst of four horns between the reed instruments.

Mozart would certainly have been astonished by the venue, however. The agricultural shed that regularly houses food fairs now boasts a craft brewery, cafe and well-stocked vinyl record emporium on site, and the main space proves remarkably well-suited for the appreciation of period performance as well as the varied repertoire played by the local brass band in the first half of the programme of the opening concert of this year’s East Neuk Festival.

As Svend McEwan Brown, the event’s director, pointed out in his introductory remarks, this fifteenth festival was the first to begin with music composed by a Fifer, and played and conducted by Fifers, in Fife. Former principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, trumpet virtuoso John Wallace, arranged and conducted the Tullis Russell Mills Bands performance of the three-movement overture to The Maid of the Mill by Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie, Mozart’s contemporary. A quintet from St Andrews University, led by its head of instrumental studies Bede Williams on an eye-catching straight Herald Bell trumpet at the front of the stage, this local period piece preceded the band’s performance of John Parkinson’s arrangements for brass band of contemporary composer Michael Nyman.

While it splendidly revealed every detail of the playing of the professionals of Ensemble Marsyas, the sharp clarity of The Bowhouse acoustic also exposed any intonation lapses in the playing of the larger group, and the rhythmic pulse of Nyman’s music is a challenge for brass instruments in any context. Any deficiencies, however, were forgotten in the impressive propulsion the band brought to Nyman’s take on music from Mozart’s Don Giovanni that brought their first half performance to a close. A singular start to this year’s event.