Somewhere for the weekend: the 10th Lammermuir Festival

It was in 2010 that the Lammermuir Festival started bringing music to beautiful and sometimes surprising venues in rural and town settings in the area of Scotland between the Lammermuir Hills and the sea. This year the festival celebrates with the 10th festival from 13th to 22nd September 2019.


Quatuor Mosaïques is returning to the festival to perform in one of its best loved venues, Whitekirk’s mediaeval church, for three programmes centred around Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartets. Dunedin Consort directed by John Butt has performed at every Lammermuir Festival and to celebrate, they perform Bach's complete Brandenburg Concertos and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with the violinist, Cecilia Bernardini. Baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Christopher Glynn will be performing Schubert's great song cycles in Jeremy Sams' recent English translations, The Fair Maid of The Mill, Winter Journey and Swansongs. Vox Luminis is visiting the festival for the first time, bringing music by Palestrina, Victoria and Scarlatti.

Flautist Adam Smith will be performing a new piece by Brett Dean and music by Nielsen with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and joining guitarist Sean Shibe for music by Piazzolla and Debussy. Composer Stuart MacRae completes a trio of festival commissions with Prometheus Symphony, a dramatic work for voices and orchestra based on the Prometheus myth. It will be performed at Haddington’s mediaeval church, St Mary’s with soprano Jennifer France and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conductor Matthew Halls.

Scottish Opera is performing a double bill of two unusual 20th century operas, Mascagni’s Zanetto and Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret with mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp, sopranos Sinead Campbell Wallace and Clare Presland, and baritone Richard Burkhard, directed by Rose Purdie and conducted by David Parry.

Full details from the Lammermuir Festival website.