SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Tetbury Music Festival 2010 - Alvarez, Bach, Barber, Brahms, Gershwin and  Lavista:  Brodsky Quartet, Roger Vignoles Academy of Ancient Music, Elizabeth Watts, Richard Egarr. Tetbury Music Festival, 30.9.2010   3.10.2010 (RJ)

There are countless small scale music festivals held up and down the country. They often perform sterling work often bringing music to places which would normally be denied the experience. Most, however, tend to play safe featuring music that will be familiar and acceptable to their audiences. But there are some which feel emboldened to strike out into unknown territory. Tetbury Music Festival, now in its 8th year, is the latest to join this elite band. Not that I would wish to disparage past festivals put on in this charming Cotswold town; no festival with which Steven Isserlis is involved can ever be dull. But when, as this year, the initial concert features music by two Mexican composers, one cannot help but sit up and take notice.

The Brodsky Quartet really made their presence felt in Xavier Alvarez' Metro Chabacano. The short work takes its title from the world's busiest underground station - in Mexico City - and different themes began to emerge from the initial hustle and bustle.  Reflejos de la Noche by his compatriot Mario Lavista proved equally atmospheric, but in a totally different way. Making use of harmonic tones he evokes a tropical night which may at first seem deceptively still, but as one listens nature springs into action with insects flitting through the air and rustling noises in the undergrowth.

The warmth and delicacy of the Brodsky's playing was a great strength in Gershwin's Lullaby. North America was also represented by Samuel Barber's String Quartet in B, in which the famous Adagio made its first appearance. The performers gave an account of this work which was satisfying both emotionally and intellectually. The Brodsky finished with a brooding and passionate performance of Brahms Piano Quintet in F with the Festival's artist in residence, Roger Vignoles who was also present in another guise. Apart from being a sensitive musician, Roger is a fine water colourist, and a number of his landscapes were on display in a local picture gallery.

Since winning the Rosenblatt Song Prize at Cardiff in 2007 Elizabeth Watts' career has gone from strength to strength. I knew that she was an accomplished lieder singer (she had performed Schumann at Tetbury two days earlier) and is currently enjoying success with Welsh National Opera, but that did not prepare me for her performance of two Bach cantatas with the Academy of Ancient Music. Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, is not particularly well known. Dating from 1713, it is thought to be Bach's first cantata for solo voice. Taking repentance as its theme, its beginning is especially austere and forbidding. Elizabeth's singing was powerful, serious and compelling, especially in the opening recitative, but as the work proceeded her tone became gentler and more prayerful, and the work culminated in a mood of serenity.

The final work in this concert, which also featured two Bach concertos, was the cantata Jauchzet Gott In Allen Landen. This joyful outpouring of praise could not have offered a bigger contrast to the earlier work, and Elizabeth Watts was at her most cheerful and vivacious aided by the lively contributions of trumpeter David Blackadder and the Academy of Ancient Music directed by Richard Egar.

Roger Jones