I didn’t get to anything in this year’s Bath Festival – there are fewer classical concerts these days and it came at a busy time for me. However I have eye(?ear)witness reports on a couple of the concerts held in the Guildhall (the Assembly Rooms weren’t used this time round, perhaps because of the reordering following the closure of the Fashion Museum):
Iyad Sughayer gave a piano recital with an intriguing programme, well performed. Opening with Khatchaturian’s Poem which was interesting but hard to follow perhaps because of the Armenian idiom underlying it. Sibelius’ pieces from Op. 24 were played with clarity and were the most memorable performnce; the pieces are good quality but would have been better orchestrated. The programme also included Mozart’s sonata K283 and Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien.
Secondly the Quatuor Agate, an all-male string quartet which is something that is becoming unusual. They began with Boccherini’s quartet in G minor, which typically for its time was dominated by the first violin, with a big cadenza. Bartok’s sixth quartet was played without compromise but was perhaps fairly new to their repertoire as they could have dug more deeply into it. The most successful piece on the programme was Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet.
I have just ordered a second-hand copy of Fifty Festivals: The history of the Bath Festival by Tim Bullamore, which takes the history of the Bath Festival up to the late 1990s. Perhaps a review of it will appear in a future post.