Schubert at the East Neuk Festival 2025

East Neuk Festival, Crail Church, 26-28/6/2023

James Newby (baritone), Mark Padmore (tenor), Joseph Middleton (piano), Pavel Haas Quartet, Ivan Vokač (cello)

Links:  https://eastneukfestival.com/events/schubert-1823/, https://eastneukfestival.com/events/schubert-1827/, https://eastneukfestival.com/events/schubert-1828i/, https://eastneukfestival.com/events/schubert-18282/

 Following a performance of the sunny Sixth Symphony in the opening concert, and in 4 concerts over 3 days (all in Crail Church), this year’s East Neuk Festival returned to the celebration of Schubert’s compellingly empathetic creativity in song and chamber music, focussing on the years 1823, 1827 and the year of his all-too-early death, 1828.  Over the first three concerts, baritone James Newby and tenor Mark Padmore were accompanied by pianist Joseph Middleton in the three great song-cycles, ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’, ‘Winterreise’ and ‘Schwanengesang’.  In the last of the four concerts, beloved Festival regulars, the Pavel Haas Quartet, were joined by their compatriot, cellist Ivan Vokač, in a performance of the String Quintet in C, D.956.  Throughout the 20th East Neuk Festival, the beautifully produced colour-printed programmes carried informative notes from festival director, Svend McEwan-Brown.  In addition, booklets of the texts of the Lieder, with English translations, were provided for the song cycles.

The afternoon concert of 26th June was billed as ‘Schubert 1823’ and featured baritone James Newby in a performance of ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’.  Wilhelm Müller’s poems tell a tale of an apprentice miller, in the flush of youth and receptive to the beauty of nature, captivated by the beauty of the mill-owner’s daughter, convinced that their destinies are entwined.  But it appears that she only has eyes for a fit young huntsman.  It is left to the listener to decide whether the poetic miller is delusional but, whatever the truth, he becomes disillusioned and pathetically reproachful, dying of a broken heart.  Schubert’s genius lay in using every element in his compositional toolkit to evoke mood and states of mind, whether buoyant or fragile.  Thus tonal and harmonic texture, tempo fluctuations, note values and especially dynamics are harnessed to chart the descent of a young man’s mood from cheerful confidence to morbid self-pity.  It falls to the performers to realise the magic and, my goodness, on this occasion they fully did so.   Joseph Middleton’s sensitive pianism set the spirit of each song and then reflected the fluctuating mood of the vocal line with subtle but telling rubato, responsive phrasing and dynamics that supported the story-telling without threatening the balance or obscuring the flawless diction.  James Newby’s timbre held the attention, even as it shifted inexorably from elation to dejection.  The dynamic power, especially in his middle voice, was used skilfully to hold focus on the narrative and, when it was unleashed with maximum expressivity, was thrilling.  Nobody does pathos like Schubert.  They delivered it to perfection.

The following afternoon (the 27th) returned to Müller’s theme of a young man’s journey, finding himself unlucky in love, to an early grave.  The concert, entitled ‘Schubert 1827’, featured tenor Mark Padmore in a performance of ‘Winterreise’.  The narrative theme is where the similarity ends, however, and the ‘Winter’s Journey’ is dark and embittered from the start, the protagonist already disillusioned, believing himself deceived by the girl he loves and her family.  He eschews human company and embarks on a solitary journey, keeping to the fringes of society, eyeing it balefully from the sidelines.  Any short-lived apparent lightening of the mood turns to self-mocking.  Of the three collections, it remains my firm favourite.  In only 4 years, Schubert’s skills have been even further honed to perfection, the music matching, and indeed amplifying, the chilling anguish of the text.  In the past, I have admired and praised Mark Padmore’s compelling interpretation of that 20th century genius of capturing the essence of a text in song, Benjamin Britten, to my personal taste significantly surpassing Peter Pears in his rich palette of timbral colour. This was my first opportunity to hear his Schubert live and I am delighted to say that the same vocal paintbox was brought to the rather noir ‘Winterreise’, supported by the same subtle and sensitive approach to accompaniment from Joseph Middleton as we had seen the previous afternoon.  We joined the unhappy poet on his final journey and derived some catharsis from the reluctant acceptance of the truths revealed by solitary introspection.  Thoroughly excellent.

Before moving on to ‘Schwanengesang’, I suppose I had better confront the ‘elephant in the room’.  If you have a tenor and a baritone and you are going to programme one cycle about the woes of a naïve youth and a darker one about the morbid decline of a self-imposed outcast, don’t the tessiture suggest ‘casting’ vice versa, with the baritone as the tortured soul and the lighter tenor as the youth?  Well, before these two concerts, I would probably have concurred.  But after?  Let’s just say that’s one purist crusade I won’t be joining.  Even though my yardstick recording of ‘Winterreise’ has always been baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Of course, ‘Schwanengesang’ is not really a song-cycle as such.  Although there are thematic echoes, there is no narrative being followed; nor is the text derived from a single poet.  On the mid-afternoon of the 28th, in a programme billed as ‘Schubert 1828:1’, the two vocal soloists returned, this time the tenor taking the somewhat lighter (though not painfree) Rellstab settings that are the first 7 numbers. The next 6, all Heine settings and quite dark and spooky, deal with the pain of bereavement and loss and were delivered by the baritone.  The bittersweet concluding number, Seidl’s ‘Die Taubenpost’ (in which we discover that the identity of the carrier pigeon entrusted with delivering the poet’s messages of love to his beloved is incorporeal and imaginary – it is only his innermost longing) reverted to Mark.  In ‘Schwanengesang’, there is a sense of calm resignation in the face of pain, acceptance of the impermanence of life, and acknowledgement of mortality.  But also, we can glimpse the composer deriving pleasure from exercising his own considerable skill.  In Crail, we also saw the realisation of these masterpieces entrusted to capable hands (and voices).  For us who were present, our lives were enriched and memories were made.

The early evening of the same day brought the Pavel Haas Quartet to the same venue in a programme titled ‘Schubert 1828:2’.  Before the Schubert quintet, they performed Janáček’s First Quartet, ‘Kreuzer Sonata’.  It has an underlying narrative based on the Tolstoy story, where a husband returns home from a business trip to find his wife in the company of a violinist, enraptured by his playing of the Beethoven sonata of that name.  Suspecting an affair, he stabs and kills her in a fit of rage and jealousy.  My first experience of the Pavel Haas Quartet live was at the 2022 East Neuk Festival where they played Janáček’s Second Quartet, ‘Intimate Letters’, as candidly expressive of tenderness and love as the First is depictive of violence and rage.  At that time I was moved to write (with apologies for the length of the quotation):

“Korngold’s slightly tongue-in-cheek phrase “operas without words” has perhaps a deeper applicability to the late development of the musical language of fellow-Moravian Leoš Janáček.  In his operas, he set aside the melodic, thematic and structural conventions of the established foreign (and indeed domestic) schools and followed the speech rhythms of the Czech language.  This discovery, transferred to his wordless instrumental music, lends it a directness and immediacy that commands the attention of the listener, as if actual words were being spoken in a universal language.  The music is emotionally involving and it is impossible, even if one tried, to remain emotionally uninvested in the enfolding narrative.  I have heard the Pavel Haas Quartet in a wide range of repertoire many times on Radio 3, ever since they were BBC New Generation Artists in the late noughties, so I knew that this concert would be memorable.  I have been to perhaps a dozen performances of Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” (Quartet No. 2) over the years, including by the great Smetana Quartet in the RDS in Dublin in the late 70s.  I knew that I would be captivated by the music.  I read in the programme that the performers had studied with Milan Škampa, the legendary violist of the Smetana Quartet.  I knew I was about to hear an informed and technically excellent performance.

“I knew nothing.  I have no hesitation in stating that the performance of Janáček’s “Intimate Letters” that I had the privilege of experiencing live in Kilrenny on 30th June 2022 was by far the finest performance I have heard, live or otherwise, of this extraordinary work.  I am not alone.  Walking back to the car after the concert, multiple strangers shared in breathless tones much the same sentiment with me.

“There is clearly, then, much about the Pavel Haas Quartet that is very special.  But then again, the 2022 Festival has brought us varied chamber ensembles, all of them special and excelling in those qualities that define great chamber music-making.  In my review of the Elias Quartet, I outlined some of these qualities: frequent eye-contact between the players, mutually responsive phrasing, dynamic balance and a sense of shared understanding of and commitment to the music and each other.  It almost goes without saying (but it shall not) that the Pavel Haas Quartet displays all of these qualities to the highest degree.  But there is something else and I think, on hearing them play Janáček, I can put my finger on it.  It is not unrelated to technical brilliance, but transcends it by adding an extra dimension to “understanding of and commitment to the music and each other”.  That dimension is deep mutual trust.  With it, it becomes possible to explore further in rehearsal and to take risks in performance, even with the most technically demanding music, such as Janáček at his most animated.  I learned something unforgettable in Kilrenny.”

So, even though the Second Quartet is by far my favourite of the two, I had been curious about their reading of the First.  That curiosity was satisfied, and I can exploit an old parliamentarian’s ploy and justify the lengthy self-quotation by “referring the member to my previous statement” – their performance of the First was no less immediate and compelling than their performance of the Second.

They were joined by Ivan Vokač, playing the first cello part, an honour the Pavel Haas Quartet readily cede to guests, yet another reason (if one were needed) to admire them.  The rapport with the quartet, and especially fellow-cellist Peter Jarúšek was evident, even before a note was played.  I recall, almost exactly 8 weeks after my ENF22 encounter described above, catching the Pavel Haas Quartet at the Edinburgh International Festival in a programme which concluded with Schubert’s emotionally charged D.887 in G, his last quartet.  It was sublime.  So, needless to say, I was looking forward to the Quintet.  I was not disappointed.  The extra cello gives the ensemble sound a robust bass (what my friend the composer Geraldine Green calls “a nice fat bottom”), but care must be taken to avoid leaden plumminess in what is, for chamber music, quite symphonic in its tenor. This was achieved with care in the shaping of notes, phrases and passages, right up to sections and whole movements.  In the first movement, dynamics served clarity of expression, rather than just dramatic effect (not that that was in any sense neglected) and had clearly been explored and thought out in rehearsal.  Subtle relaxations of tempo made the most of lyrical and story-telling moments.  The spellbinding second movement began with a muted idyll, sung by Veronika Jarúšková’s violin over Ivan’s gentle pizzicato and gentle shifting chords on the other three.  An occasional bit of idiomatic Viennese portamento seemed just right in context (I’m normally not a fan).  Mutes off for the turbulent stormy central section, followed by the fragile plea for peace from the first violin over restless comments from the others.  The return to the idyll answered the prayer.  Exquisite.  The Scherzo, a cross-country dash that seems to shout “Tally-ho” and beg to be orchestrated (I did it once but, as I couldn’t resist using a very un-Schubertian set of 4 horns, it’s probably just as well that the arrangement hasn’t seen the light of day).  It was a thrilling romp.  The contrasting Trio is slow and melancholy, with some gorgeous hymn-like chording and a mysterious hushed passage before returning to the hunt.  The dance-like finale is an Allegretto, the first theme Hungarian in character in the minor key, the second more Viennese in the major, awarded some more lilting portamento.  There are some more relaxed moments, including some sweet dreamy sotto voce singing arpeggiation, but for the most part, it is a hard driven, restless movement.  The final dash is in the major key, but frantic and joyless, ending enigmatically with a unison semitone snarl, as the emotional roller-coaster hits the buffers.  A dramatic and compelling performance.  Full marks from me.