United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival 2024 [5]: Raphaël Feuillâtre (guitar, 9.8), Stephan Dohr (horn, 10.8), Carolin Widmann (violin, 10.8), Dénes Várjon (piano, 10.8). Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 9 & 10.8.2024. (SRT)
First the good news. The Edinburgh International Festival’s chamber music programme is as diverse as ever this year. Sure, there are a few string quartets and song recitals, but much of the three weeks is taken up with a really diverse groups of solo musicians, plus exciting one-offs like Jakub Józef Orliński’s immersive baroque theatre piece (review click here) or, on the final morning, an exploration of Rossini’s Petite Messe solenell.
The grumps? Whether for reasons of sustainability or accessibility, the festival has done away with programme booklets for most of their performances, and all of the Queen’s Hall series so far. Instead, we get freesheets which give a useful rundown of what is being performed, but no information whatever about the music. That is fine when the musician talks about it from the stage, as the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela did very powerfully, because it gives the audience an insight into the programming process, as well as a connection with the performers. There was none of that in Raphaël Feuillâtre’s concert, though. Instead, we got a lovely collection of guitar music about which Feuillâtre said not one word, and we were left to guess about his thought process in putting the whole thing together.
Furthermore, they have taken to drawing the curtains on the hall and blacking out the outside light, which is fine when it is a theatre piece like Orliński’s, but very odd for the others. And whose decision is that, the festival’s or the artist’s? I can’t imagine Feuillâtre having asked for it. After all, his programme simply oozed Mediterranean sunlight, particularly in its second half with so much Spanish music that instantly transported me to the gothic quarters of sun-drenched Spanish cities with their musty atmospheres and heavy heat. Why shut out what little sunshine we get in Scotland on one of the few days it could help to illustrate the music?
For all that its basis remained mysterious, Feuillâtre’s programme was very well constructed as pure sequences of sound. Each half began with something gentle to ease the listener into its soundworld, before becoming livelier and, at the end, more challenging. The second, Spanish, half for example, began with familiar tunes from Llobet and Albéniz before moving into chewier fare from Tarrega and Dyens’s exhilaratingly acrobatic Clown Down. The first half moved in a similar trajectory from Bach to the lightning figurations of Llobet’s Variations. Impressive as that was, though, it was the baroque transcriptions that I found particularly captivating, magically so in places. The music of the eighteenth century – Bach, Couperin, Scarlatti – fitted the guitar so well that, if you didn’t know better, you would have sworn they were written for them. They fitted the instrument absolutely beautifully in these transcriptions and Feuillâtre played them with such a lovely sense of legato and an understatedly gentle dynamic that, by the time the interval began, I found myself in something approaching a state of zen.
There wasn’t much zen in Stephan Dohr’s programme, on the other hand, but he did speak about his programme, and his concert was all the better for it. Yes, there was a gorgeously honeyed Brahms Trio, and his playing of Beethoven’s youthful Horn Sonata was a remarkably invigorating thing to hear at 11am on a Saturday morning. Likewise, Carolin Widmann and Dénes Várjon played Beethoven’s C minor violin sonata with drama and searching intensity.
By far the most interesting thing on the programme, however, was Ligeti’s Horn Trio, which Dohr took the time to unpack from the stage before they played it. His demystifying of the piece made it the most involving thing in the concert as a result, the three musicians treating it as a study in loneliness and isolation, particularly in its creepy finale that explored the darkest extremities of the instruments. And they had the curtains open, which somehow helped.
Simon Thompson
The Edinburgh International Festival runs at venues across the city until Sunday 25th August. Click here for further details.
9.8.2024 – Raphaël Feuillâtre (guitar), Queen’s Hall.
Bach (tr. Raphaël Feuillâtre) – Prelude 1 in C major, BWV 846 from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1
Couperin (arr. Antoine Fougeray) – Les barricades mystérieuses
Duphly (arr. Antoine Fougeray) – Médée
Bach (arr. Gérard Abiton) – Choral: Ich rufe zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639
Bach after Vivaldi (arr. Judicaël Perroy) – Concerto in D major, BWV 972
Scarlatti (arr. Gérard Abiton) – Sonate, K208
Scarlatti – Sonate, K322
Llobet Soles – Variations on a theme of Sor (La Folia); El noi de la mare; Canco del lladre
Albéniz – Granada; Asturias
Tárrega = Preludes 5 & 6
Barrios Mangoré – La Catedral
Piazzolla (arr. Tirao) – Adiós Nonino
Dyens – Triaela III ‘Clown Down’ (Gismonti au Cirque)
10.8.2024 – Stephan Dohr (horn), Carolin Widmann (violin), Dénes Várjon (piano), Queen’s Hall.
Beethoven – Horn Sonata
Ligeti – Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano
Beethoven – Violin Sonata No.7 in C minor
Brahms – Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano
The free-sheet (rather than a paid programme) is a real talking point at this year’s Festival. I support it.
The essential info needed to enjoy a performance should always be provided free (although actually paid-for as part of the ticket price). Long essays explaining the choice of music (etc.) might be interesting, but are rarely essential. And, anyway, the performance is for listening, not reading.
If the performer(s) choose to give extra info verbally as part of their performance, that’s fine. If the Festival chooses to suggest internet links for further info, that’s fine too. But anything else, if it’s essential info, should be in the free-sheet.
I appreciate that the absence of an explanatory programme (presumably provided free?) to critics doesn’t give them much of a start when it comes to putting ‘fingers to keyboards’ for their reviews. But that simply puts them on an equal footing with the rest of us, and somehow I feel that knowledgeable and experienced writers like Simon will cope!
Simon, lovely review of Raphael Feuillatre. I assume you were seated very near the stage. Unfortunately his beautiful mastery of the classical guitar did not carry halfway to the back if the Queen’s Hall. Jealous you were able to hear and enjoy it.