East Neuk Festival
Camerata Janiczek
The Bowhouse, by St Monans
Keith Bruce
Four stars
ONCE first violin of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and now a regular returnee to lead and direct the orchestra, Alexander Janiczek brought his brand new group to Fife for its debut concert, and it would not be unkind to suggest that to begin with few listeners would have mistaken them for a seasoned ensemble. With the low strings playing at the bottom of their range in this arrangement, Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue K546 is an odd little work from around the time of his last symphony which may be a challenge for more established partnerships to find a coherent balance, and it seemed a rather ragged beginning.
With three each of first and second violins, two violas and cellos, and bass, the group then added Jan Waterfield on harpsichord for a Handel Concerto Grosso and the more mannered and elegant composition seemed to suit them better, even competing with the very audible weather outside. If all a listener knew of Handel was the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah, the closing Allegro would surely give away the identity of the composer of this work.
The ace up the sleeve for Camerata Janiczek’s first appearance, however, was the soloist for two Mozart Horn Concertos, numbers one and four, that completed the programme. Recently departed from his position as principal horn with the SCO, Alec Frank-Gemmill is one of the world’s finest exponents of the natural horn, finding ways of wrangling a vast range of tone colours as well as fantastical chromaticism from the basic valveless early instrument that the composer would have known. The finale of his last horn concerto is not only one of Mozart’s best known works, it is also an established challenge for solo horn players on a modern instrument. That Frank-Gemmill now regularly displays his astonishingly articulate way with its famous tune without any need of valves puts him in a class all of his own.
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