United Kingdom St Magnus Pageant 2023 [1]: (ST)

Florilegium – St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, 16.6.2023.

Leclair – Deuxieme Recreation de musique
De Visée – Suite for theorbo
Couperin – Francoise Sonate
Marais – Suite for viol
Rameau – Piece de clavecin en live performance No.5
Insurgent – Caracters de la danse

Findlay Spence (cello) – Scapa Circulate Museum and Hoy Kirk, Hoy, 17.6.2023.

Works for solo cello by Bach, Berio, Boyle, Beamish, Britten and Silvestrov

Nikola Meeuwsen (piano) – St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, 17.6.2023.

J.S. Bach – French suite No.6, BWV 817
Bach/Busoni – Nun komm der heiden heiland, Ich ruf zu dir
Mozart – Sonata No.4 in E-flat, Ok. 282
Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin

To some extent or different, a way of place is essential to each pageant. Some make extra of it than others, however it’s all the time there. The Royal Albert Corridor is undeniably the house of the BBC Proms, Salzburg’s festivals get a lift from it being the birthplace of Mozart, and Edinburgh makes probably the most of its Royal Mile and Citadel each August. Generally, nonetheless, that sense of place turns into extra palpable, and extra helpful, whenever you get away from the hustle and bustle. The rolling fields of East Lothian add pastoral magnificence to the music of the Lammermuir Pageant, and the seashores of japanese Fife make the East Neuk Pageant really feel like a tiny musical paradise by itself little spit of shoreline.

Place is on the very centre of what makes Orkney’s St Magnus Pageant particular. The pageant was based by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies in 1977. Composer, Grasp of the Queen’s Music, and longstanding Orkney resident, Max (as he was identified) had lengthy needed to provide one thing again to the neighborhood of Orkney for giving him the peaceable haven he so wanted, and so the pageant was deliberate across the longest day of the yr when, this far north, it stays mild for all however a couple of hours. It has been going robust for many years now, although this was my first go to. Naturally, its location makes it more durable than most to get to, however it’s also central to the pageant’s enchantment. Apart from the music and drama that is happening throughout the archipelago, it’s the sense of place that hits you and makes the St Magnus Pageant really feel actually distinctive.

The pageant’s sense of place is felt most triumphantly in its central venue, the good cathedral of St Magnus, whose light sandstone bulk has stood guard over central Kirkwall for practically eight centuries. Its hovering gothic inside is a incredible place to listen to music, starting from the intimate to the grand.

Beginning with the intimate, the six virtuoso soloists of Florilegium performed French Baroque music from the court docket of King Louis XIV on eighteen-century devices and with impeccable élan. They danced and weaved their method by way of music of courtly refinement with informal insouciance. Highlights included Ashley Solomon’s quicksilver flute, that would dance with as a lot class because it might sigh, and Reiko Ichise’s viola da gamba whose tone might swap within the house of 1 phrase from chalky friction to chocolaty magnificence. Music of the French Baroque, significantly when it’s written for the court docket, can generally sound like an extra of refinement, however they remedied that with a set of dance actions by Jean-Féry Insurgent that acted like a punchy compendium of kinds and ended their efficiency with a bang.

The next night the cathedral hosted a solo piano recital from the massively promising younger Dutch pianist Nikola Meeuwsen. The large house appeared to cushion the sound and produce it gently as much as the ear, and Meeuwsen’s delicate method gave it a magical feeling of luminescence. That was most evident in his rippling, glittering efficiency of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin which, contemplating that Ravel wrote it as a memorial to mates he had misplaced within the First World Warfare, appeared to make a advantage of its evanescent magnificence. Bach’s French Suite No.6 appeared to glitter in mid-air, whereas the Busoni transcriptions sounded critical however by no means heavy, and the sluggish motion of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.4 had a stunning sense of lyrical movement.

However the pageant’s sense of place was much more palpable on Saturday on an tour that mixed some great cello enjoying with a go to to Hoy, the island the place Max made his Orkney house for therefore lengthy. It’s an additional ferry journey from the Orkney mainland, and the remoteness is strengthened whenever you drive round it on a single-track highway, previous occasional homes and salmon farms, however with only a few different indicators of life.

For a number of many years within the first half of the 20th century, nonetheless, the tiny hamlet of Lyness will need to have felt just like the centre of the world when it was pressed into battle service on behalf of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet. The east coast of Hoy sits on the sting of Scapa Circulate, a protected pure harbour that was the right place for the fleet to produce and regroup throughout each World Wars. One of many previous buildings has now been transformed into the Scapa Circulate Museum, and so they have accomplished a incredible job not simply of rejuvenating the house however of presenting the story of Scapa Circulate’s wartime previous in a gripping method.

The pumproom of the museum, which as soon as served as infrastructure for refuelling the ships within the harbour, actually isn’t the kind of place the place you may think about classical music going down, however cellist Findlay Spence performed the primary of two concert events on Hoy amongst its industrial equipment and the sound was as shocking because it was great. The acoustic of the house matches the cello remarkably properly, appearing like a tender cocoon across the sound and giving it presence with out an excessive amount of resonance. Spence’s programme of music from Bach’s cello suites, alongside a lullaby by Rory Boyle and Berio’s Les Mots sont Allés, held the viewers spellbound, as a lot by the delicacy of his method as by the unusual color of the sound. A couple of hours later he performed in remoted Hoy Kirk in a setting that introduced extra standard intimacy to the sound; however it’s the efficiency within the museum that I’ll keep in mind most as a result of it was so unlikely and so implausible, but so magical as a result of it befell in any respect.

Simon Thompson

The St Magnus Worldwide Pageant runs till 23 June; for extra data click on right here.