The late Miles Kington once passed an observation made to him that many Somerset village names could be those of lawyers from American TV mini-series. I can’t however imagine a lawyer called Chew Magna, one of my favourites, where I attended a ‘Festival on Tour’ concert in the Bath Festival, given by the Navarra Quartet.
The venue was the parish church, quite satisfactory for the smallish audience though I did hear an extraneous high-pitched whistling sound during the first piece. I suspect this was a hearing aid whose wearer was blissfully unaware of the noise it was making, though I suppose it might have been part of the sound system, or something else in the church set in vibration by the music, or even something outside the building (the direction was hard to determine).
The programme featured three turbulent works: Haydn’s Op. 20 no. 3, Berg’s Op. 3 and Brahms’ Op. 51 no. 1. I sensed it took a little while for the performers to settle and for the ensemble to really gel. This may have been because of a change of personnel (explained at the beginning of the concert) or because they were bothered by the noise as well. The Brahms was the best received piece, though I felt it was musically the least interesting of the three.
The ‘Festival on Tour’ concerts, if this was typical, have a different and more intimate feel from the main Festival events, though without some of the fringe benefits such as interval refreshments. Tickets are also significantly cheaper, though to offset that there is the potential effort and expense of getting to the venue.