United Kingdom Lammermuir Festival 2024 – Muffat: Concerto Copenhagen / Lars Ulrik Mortensen (director/continuo). St Mary’s Church, Haddington, 13.9.2024. (SRT)
Georg Muffat – The Five Sonatas
In 2023 the Lammermuir Festival seemed to be staring into the abyss when its organisers discovered that they had lost all of their Creative Scotland funding, putting a serious question mark over the festival’s future. 2024 has brought better news, however, with some funding restored on a two-year basis and, perhaps more importantly, resolute support from the festival’s artists and audiences; all of which has enabled them to put on as strong a programme in 2024 as they have ever done.
At its heart sits a four-concert residency from period instrument superstars Concerto Copenhagen, conducted by their boss Lars Ulrik Mortensen. I went to their third concert, staged in Haddington’s vast medieval church of St Mary’s, where they presented the most unusual repertoire of their residency: five ‘sonatas’ for orchestra written by Georg Muffat. As you might tell from his name, Georg, while born in Savoy, thought of himself as firmly German, but his ancestors were Moffats from Scotland. His sonatas are contained in his Armonico Tributo of 1682, and they are really concerti grossi ‘for a few or many instruments.’
They are also completely charming, played here with the most delectable sweetness and a scale that fitted St Mary’s like a glove. The first comparison you reach for is Handel. There is a sensuality to the music of Muffat’s suites that appeals directly to the emotions, bypassing the more cerebral mathematical appeal of Bach for the pleasures of the heart and soul. The movements that comprise the five sonatas are sometimes abstract and sometimes sophisticated dances, and it is fascinating letting the ear switch between the two. The Allegros and Adagios have a respectable feel to them, but the dances are unashamed heel-kickers, with some terrifically bouncy gavottes and menuets that have a terrific kick to them, and the whole set ended with a monster Passacaglia that felt like a refined circular dance, full of trills, grace notes and flourishes.
Concerto Copenhagen have loved this music for years, and they play it as though it has a special place in their hearts. Mortensen’s conducting placed a lovely sheen of legato across the music, and that gave it a smooth, suave texture that invited the listener to linger and wallow. Each of the sonatas had a different scoring, and the musicians seemed to revel in the different textures each required. The fourth, for example, was effectively a Trio Sonata that threw the spotlight onto the violins – was there a touch of birdsong to their playful allegro semiquavers? – while the first and fifth were full scale orchestral concerti, with spicy oboes and nutty bassoons blending perfectly with wiry strings to create an overall lithe, polished texture.
Whichever way they were scored, however, the overall impression was one of beauty amalgamated with energy and a wonderful liveliness. An evening of music by an unknown composer is a risk, for both promoters and audience, but this was totally persuasive and really rather lovely. And aren’t discoveries like this supposed to be what festivals are all about?
Simon Thompson