United Kingdom Lammermuir Pageant 2026 [1]: (SRT)
9.9.2026 – Marian Consort, Rory McCleery (director). Our Girl of Loretto, Musselburgh
Gabrieli – Jubilate Deo, omnis terra
Palestrina – Missa sine nomine; Nunc dimittis a8
Hassler – Pater noster a8
Schütz – Selig sind die Toten; Sehet an den Feigenbaum
Handl – Media vita
Stabile – Nunc dimittis a8
J.S. Bach – Komm, Jesu komm
11.9. – Charlotte Jane Kennedy, Avery Lafrentz (sopranos), Charlotte Clapperton (mezzo-soprano), Orchestra of Scottish Opera / Douglas Boyd (conductor). St Mary’s Church, Haddington
Pärt – Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten
Britten – Les Illuminations; Phaedra; Our Searching Fathers
Vocal music has at all times been a powerful a part of East Lothian’s Lammermuir Pageant. The church buildings that function the pageant’s primary venues lend themselves to it, and the pageant has constructed up a powerful relationship with some glorious choral teams that preserve returning.
A type of is the Marian Consort, who got here again to the 2026 pageant with a programme that explored J.S. Bach’s love for the music of the Renaissance. The centrepiece of their programme was Palestrina’s Missa Sine nomine, a piece that Bach rated so extremely that he copied it out in his personal hand to be used with the choir of the Thomaskirche. The scoring is for the 8-strong voices of the consort supplemented by the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble (3 cornetts, 3 sackbuts, in case you are curious), and the very first thing that struck the viewers in Musselburgh’s church of Our Girl of Loretto was how fantastically balanced they’d managed to make the sound. There was a stunning ‘unfold’ to it when it was in full bloom, with pearly sopranos ringing clearly within the acoustic, basses that had been clearly current with out ever being dominant, and the earthy ring of the sackbuts resonating with the chamber organ and balancing the reedy piping of the cornetts.
It made for a remarkably satisfying entire, notably within the mass setting, which sounded surprisingly wealthy as directed by Rory McCleery. He had put collectively a intelligent programme which interspersed the mass actions with German music that demonstrated Palestrina’s affect, together with a quietly luminous Pater noster by Hans Leo Hassler, a disarmingly limpid Media through by Jacob Handl, and two items by Heinrich Schütz, one instrumental and one vocal, which had a delicate majesty to them, maybe reflecting Schütz’s time finding out in Italy.
The true achievement of the musicians is that, once we lastly heard from Bach in his motet Komm, Jesu, komm, this acquainted music sounded freshly minted after the Mediterranean firm it had been retaining. The addition of the devices added an additional, keening fringe of mourning to the vocal line, and its match of choral depth and instrumental ambiance created a marvellously satisfying end result of a dashed intelligent piece of programming.
Friday night’s live performance targeted on solo vocal music, on this case chosen to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the demise of Benjamin Britten. It was carried out by Scottish Opera, who’ve been common companions for the Lammermuir Pageant over the previous few years, however specializing in track cycles somewhat than a staged drama is a departure for them right here.
There was nonetheless drama aplenty, although, from each orchestra and soloists, notably in Phaedra, his monodrama primarily based on Racine that he wrote in the direction of the tip of his life. Charlotte Clapperton sang it with intense focus and a marvellously intense mezzo-soprano voice, redolent with emotion whereas making each phrase depend. You could possibly say the identical about Avery Lafrentz, who sang Our Searching Fathers with vivid color and astonishing approach, notably within the weird coloratura trilling of the falconry track.
The orchestra matched the singers with pictorial depth, notably within the dusky string chords which mirror the poison taking up Phaedra’s physique, and the virtuoso swoop and swirl of the flight sequence of Our Searching Fathers, earlier than the eerie ticktock of the xylophone that ushered within the icy weirdness of its ultimate track. The strings had been additionally filled with exhilarating vigour in Les Illuminations, enjoying the opening fanfare, specifically with terrific confidence. That confidence wasn’t fairly mirrored within the singing of Charlotte Jane Kennedy, who sang all of it fairly ‘straight’, lacking a lot of the doubleness of the textual content. Nonetheless, she finally discovered a few of that in Parades, and she or he achieved stunning delicacy within the ultimate highwire sigh of Phrase.
Appropriately, the live performance started with Arvo Pärt ‘s Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, the strings rising from the silence below Douglas Boyd’s course in a method that made the music appear to soften and re-form, to fracture and coalesce earlier than our ears.
Simon Thompson
The Lammermuir Pageant runs till 20 September, for extra info click on right here.
