We didn’t get to very much in this year’s Bath Festival, though the programme was good. In fact apart from ‘Party in the City’ and the Kingswood gig in Green Park Station, it amounted to me going to a couple of concerts.
There was a series of early-evening song recitals and I heard Ann Murray and Samuel Hasselhorn with Malcolm Martineau in a sequence of Brahms Lieder (on the whole not the most famous ones), in St Swithin’s church. I especially appreciated the great range of facial expressions she brought to the music, especially when she involved her co-recitalist. I’m afraid I don’t now remember very much else about the performances!
I was given a ticket to hear Richard Goode – an occasional visitor to the Festival over the years – on the final Sunday afternoon in the Assembly Rooms. The merger with the Literature Festival led to a rather cluttered platform, with some ugly and intrusive speakers (couldn’t they have been moved out of the way?) and though it was a hot day the windows in the hall remained firmly shut. Are they in fact ever opened? A rather bored-looking audience member in front distracted me by frequently fanning herself with her programme, though either she cooled off or someone had a word with her after the first few pieces, as she stopped after that. The concert was well attended though not a sell-out.
She shouldn’t have been bored as the recital had plenty of interest. It opened with Bach’s Partita no. 6. Bach’s Partitas are unknown territory for me and their complexities are far removed from the dances which generate their musical forms. (Why is the Gigue in 4/2 time? That wasn’t what I learnt in music theory classes!) Chopin’s mazurkas (including a haunting favourite of mine, Op. 50 no. 3) and Polonaise-Fantaisie are also ‘not for dancing’.
After the interval came two late Beethoven sonatas, op. 101 and and op. 110. I am familiar with these so have many interpretations to measure a performance against. Op. 101 did not come out so well as there were some wrong notes and a tendency to be too heavy in the left hand. Op. 110 came out better with some lovely rippling effects in the opening movement.
I look forward to 2018’s Festival which I believe is going to be expanded to two full weeks, after several years when it has been significantly shorter.